I 



SCHOOL-DAYS 



oy 



EMIE"EISrT MEE". 



I. 

SKETCHES OF THE PROGRESS OF EDUCATION IN ENGLAND, 
FROM THE REIGN OF KING ALFRED TO THAT OF 
• QUEEN VICTORIA. 

II. 

EARLY LIVES OF CELEBRATED BRITISH AUTHORS, PHILOSO- 
PHERS AND POETS, INVENTORS AND DISCOVERERS, 
DIVINES, HEROES, STATESMEN AND 
LEGISLATORS. 



^ 



/ 



BY 



JOHN TIMBS, F.S.A., 

AUTHOR OF " OITBXOSITIBS OF LONDON," " THINOS NOT QENXaAlLT KNOWN,'* «T0. 



FROM THE LONDON EDITION. 



COLUMBUS: 

POLLETT, FOSTER AND COMPANY. 

U DCCC LX. 






^ 






y^ 



D 



rOLLETT, FOSTER k CO., 
Printers, Stereotypers, Binders 
" and Publishers, 
COLUHBUS, OHIO. 



1 




TO THE READEE. 



To our admiration of true greatness naturally succeeds some curiosity as 
to the means by which such distinction has been attained. The subject of 
" the School-days of Eminent Persons," therefore, promises an abundance 
of striking incident, in the eariy buddings of genius, and formation of 
character, through which may be gained glimpses of many of the hidden 
thoughts and secret springs by which master-minds have moved the world. 

The design of the present volume may be considered an ambitious one 
to be attempted within so limited a compass ; but I felt the incontestible 
facility of producing a book brimful of noble examples of human action 
and well-directed energy, more especially as I proposed to gather my 
materials from among the records of a country whose cultivated people 
have advanced civilization far beyond the triumphs of any nation, an- 
cient or modern. In other words, I resolved to restrict my design to 
British Worthies. 

I had no sooner sketched the outline of my plan than the materials 
crowded upon me with an excess " whose very indices are not to be read 
over in an age." I then resolved to condense and select from the long 
line of Educated Worthies, rather than attempt to crowd the legion into a 
few hundred pages. Thus additional interest was gained ; for the smaller 
the charmed circle of light, the more intensely will it point upon the reader. 

The present volume is divided into two Sections. The first is historical 
as well as biographical : it sketches the Progress of Education, com- 
mencing with the dark age of our history, when knowledge was wrapt in 
the gloom and mysticism of the Druidical grove ; and thence the narrative 
travels onward and upward to the universal teachings of the present time. 
In this section are portrayed the ^Jz/ccr^ion of each Sovereign, his early habits 
and tastes, which often exercised powerful influence upon the people. In 
each reign I have described the foundation of the great Schools, and 
sketched the Educational customs of the period. The teaching of its illus- 
trious men is also incidentally recorded ; and wherever such men have 
proved benefactors by the proposition or establishment of special Schools 
or Systems of Education, their lives and plans are narrated with fuller 



IV To the Header, 

detail. How fraught with pious memories and hallowed associations are 
those great institutions of this great country — her Public Schools! How 
consecrated are their localities — how illuminated by the bright lights of 
centuries — whether around an ancient college nestling at the hill-foot — fit 
home for the tender young — as at Winchester ; whether amid picturesque 
spires and towers, as in " the watery glade " of Eton ; or in the kindred 
regal munificence of Christ's Hospital and Westminster — in the olden clois- 
ter and cell peopled with busy sons of learning, and earnest expounders 
of the Reformed Faith ; or where citizenship and philanthropy have kept 
pace with kingly dispensation, raising within many a city, town, and hamlet, 
homes for the orphan and friendless — where the good seed might be sown, 
and the tiny child trained up in the way he should go. 

Each of these foundations has its history, relics of its celebrated sons, 
and fond memorials of their worth. For centuries after the victory of 
Agincourt, were shown the rooms in which was reared Henry V. at Ox- 
ford 5 to this day, Dryden's autograph in wood is preserved at Westmins- 
ter ; and with each returning summer is renewed the leafy shade beneath 
which Addison loved to meditate at Magdalene. 

Among the incidental varieties of this Section are the descriptions of 
the changes in manners and customs, the old usages and quaint forms, cere- 
monies and observances, of a more picturesque age than the present. 

Nor, in journeying through these bye-ways of local history have I passed 
by those ancient seats of learning where the solemn church, the stately 
hall, and the embellished depositories of the wisdom of past ages, have 
been reared with pious feeling, and endowed by the gratitude of those who 
became, walking in the paths of duty and honor, rich in this world's wealth. 
How much of England's greatness has been nurtured in these magnificent 
seats of academic glory, and matured amidst the congenial repose of their 
groves and gardens ! 

The Second Section of the work is devoted to Anecdote Biographies, 
or sketches of the early lives — the School and College Days — of Eminent 
Men who, by their genius, learning, and character, have shed luster upon 
their name and country. In these brief memoirs I have recorded the inci- 
dents of their birth, boyhood, and education, until they have entered upon 
the world-wide field of action. 

That by narrating the circumstances under which these Eminent Men 
have severally reached their excellence— that the number and variety of 
suggestive points in this volume may exercise a beneficial influence, and 
not only interest the reader, but induce him to emulate their examples, — 
is the sincere wish of THE AUTHOR. 



CONTENTS. 



PROGRESS OF EDUCATION. 

FAGB 

Education of the Early Britons 1 

Schools of the Druids 2 

The Roman-British Schools 3 

Introduction of Writing 3 

Education of the Clergy 4 

Canterbury and other Monastic Schools in the Seventh Century 5 

Rise of Anglo-Saxon Schools C 

The Schools of Alfred 7 

St. Dunstan, the Scholar of Glastonbury 10 

King Canute a Poet 11 

The Earliest Books 11 

The Saxon Language. — Formation of the English Language 12 

Education of William the Conqueror 15 

Lanfranc. — Ingulphus and the Schools of Croyland 15 

William II. — Henry I, — Stephen 18 

Henry II. — His love of Letters. — Sports of the London Scholars 19 

Rise of Anglo-Norman Schools 21 

Richard I., the Poet King 22 

Church Schools.— Benefit of Clergy 22 

Rise of Universities 23 

Troubled Reign of King John 25 

Henry III. — Settlement of the English Language 26 

Roger Bacon an Educational Reformer 26 

Edward II. — Schools in his Reign 27 

Edward III. — His Accomplishments 28 

Schools in the Age of Chaucer 29 

Scholarship of Edward the Black Prince 30 

Winchester College founded by William of Wykeham 31 

Wickliffe Translates the Bible 33 

Education of Richard II. — His Patronage of Gower 35 

Henry IV. — His Accomplishments 36 

Henry V. at Queen's College, Oxford 36 

Early Parochial Schools. — Schools in Churches 38 

E<lucation at Home. — Music 39 

Childhood and Youth of Henry VI 41 

Henry VI. founds Eton College, and King's College, Cambridge 42 

John Carpenter and the City of London School 47 

Mercer's School.— The First Grammar School 48 

Saint Paul's School founded 48 

Edward IV. and his Tutors 50 

Costliness of Manuscript Books 51 



I 



vi Contents, 

PAOS 

Edward V. in Ludlow Castle 62 

Introduction of Printing 53 

Early Printed Books 63 

Childhood and Education of Richard III 64 

Troubled Boyhood of Henry VII 66 / 

An Eminent Grammarian and Poet Laureate 69y 

Early Life and Character of Henry VHI 60 

Ill-educated Nobility 61 

The School of Sir Thomas More 62 

Wolsey, Latimer, and Cranraer 64 

Boyhood and Learning of Edward VI 65 

Edward VI. founds Christ's Hospital 68 

King Edward's Schools at Birmingham, Lichfield, Tunbridge and 

Bedford 72 

Education and Reign of Queen Mary 75 

Education of Queen Elizabeth 76 

Roger Ascham— His " Schoolmaster " 77 

Lady Jane Grey and her Schoolmaster 78 

Sir Anthony Cook and his four Learned Daughters 79 

A Truant punished in the 16th Century 80 

Flogging in Schools 81 

Westminster College School founded 81 

A Poor Westminster Scholar 85 

Merchant Taylors' School founded 86 

Greshara College founded 88 

Statesmen, Poets, and Dramatists of Elizabeth's Reign 88 

Rugby School founded 90 

Harrow School founded 93 

Education of James I 95 

Education of Prince Henry 97 

Literature of the Reign of James I 99 

Burton and Selden 100 

Thomas Fuller's " Schoolmaster " 101 

Charter-house School founded 102 

Education of Charles 1 104 

Literature and Learning at the Accession of Charles I , 106 

A Good Education in the Seventeenth Century 108 

Sir Matthew Hale's Plan of Instruction 109 

Newspapers introduced 110 

Milton's System of Instruction Ill 

Locke's System of Education 113 

Grammar-Schools in the Seventeenth Century 115 

Influence of the Writings of Lord Bacon 115 

The First Scientific Treatises in English 117 

Invention of Logarithms. — Napier's Bones — Gunter's Scale 117 

The Sciences at Oxford and Cambridge 118 

Boyhood and Education of Oliver Cromwell 120 

Charles II.— His Patronage of Letters 121 

Nonconformist Schools at Islington and Newington Green 123 

Boyhood of James II 124 

Literature of the Seventeenth Century 125 

Rise of Free Schools or Charity-Schools 126 

Education of William III 130 

The Reign of Queen Anne— The Augustan Age of Literature 132 

Reigns of George I. and George II 134 



Contents, vii 

PAQK 

Education of George III 135 

Sunday Schools established 138 

The Monitorial System of Bell and Lancaster 139 

The Primer and the Hornbook . . 140 

Progress of Education in the Reigns of George IV. and William IV.. . 144 

ANECDOTE BIOGRAPHIES. 

Early Fortunes of William of Wykeham 149 

William Caxton, the First English Printer 150 

Boyhood and Rise of Sir Thomas More 151 

The Poets Wyatt and Surrey 152 

Lord Burleigh at Cambridge 153 

Camden's Schools 155 

Sir Edward Coke's Legal Studies 156 

Spenser at Cambridge 157 

Richard Hooker at Heavitree 157 

Sir Philip Sidney—" the English Petrarch " 158 

Boyhood of Lord Bacon 160 

The Admirable Crichton 161 

How George Abbot, the Clothweaver's son, became Archbishop of Can- 
terbury 163 

Shakspeare at Strat ford-on- A von 164 

Lord Herbert of Cherbury, in Shropshire 165 

Admiral Blake at Bridgwater 166 

Waller's Dullness 166 

Dr. Busby, head-master of Westminster School 167 

Lord Clarendon's Studies 169 

Sir Matthew Hale's Early Life 170 

Samuel Butler at Worcester 171 

Jeremy Taylor at Cambridge 172 

Cowley at Westminster 172 

John Evelyn at Eton and Oxford 173 

Marvell's Scholarship 175 

John Aubrey in Wiltshire 176 

The Hon. Robert Boyle, a true Patron and Cultivator of Science 176 

John Bunyan, author of " The Pilgrim's Progress " 177 

Isaac Barrow at the Charter-house 179 

Dryden at Westminster and Oxford 180 

Philip Henry at Westminster 182 

Sir Christopher Wren at Westminster and Oxford 182 

Dr. South at Westminster 184 

Bishop Ken at Winchester 185 

Sir Dudley North— How he made up for his Dullness at School 188 

Newton at Grantham and Cambridge 190 

William Penn at Oxford 192 

The Great Duke of Marlborough at St. Paul's School 194 

Matthew Prior at Westminster 195 

Addison at Lichfield, Charter-house, and Oxford 196 

Dr. Isaac Watts— His Schools and Educational Works 197 

Pope's Schools and Self-tuition ; 198 

John Gay at Barnstaple , 202 

How Edmund Stone taught himself Mathematics 202 

John Wesley at the Charter-house and Oxford 203 

Lord Mansfield at Westminster - 206 



^ 



Contents, 



1 



Lord Chatham at Eton and Oxford 207 

Dr. Johnson at Lichfield, Stourbridge, and Oxford 207 

How James Ferguson taught himself the Classics and Astronomy. ... 212 

Lord Camden at Eton and Cambridge 213 

Sheastone's " Schoolmistress " 213 

Gray at Eton and Cambridge 215 

How Brindley taught himself the Rudiments of Mathematics 217 

William Collins at Winchester and Oxford 218 

Lord Clive— His Daring Boyhood 220 

Captai n Cook's Education on board Ship 221 

John Hunter's Want of Education 222 

Edmund Burke at Ballitore and Dublin 223 

Cowper at Market-street and Westminster 226 

Warren Hastings at Westminster 228 

Gibbon, the Historian— His Schools and Plan of Study 229 

Archdeacon Paley at Cambridge 230 

Sir Joseph Banks at Eton 231 

Sir William Jones at Harrow 232 

How Dr. Parr became a Parson instead of a Surgeon 234 

Lords Eldon and Stowell at Newcastle and Oxford 236 

The Two Brothers Milner 238 

How William Giflford became a Scholar and Critic 239 

Lord Nelson's Schools in Norfolk 240 

Robert Burns, " the Ayrshire Plowman " 243 

Richard Porson, " the Norfolk Boy," at Happesburgh, Eton, and Cam- 
bridge 246 

The Marquis Wellesley at Eton and Oxford 250 

Lord Chief-Justice Tcnterden at Canterbury and Oxford 252 

How Robert Bloomfield wrote his "Farmer's Boy" in the heart of 

London 253 

Precocity of Sir Thomas Lawrence 254 

The Duke of Wellington's Schools 256 

George Canning at Eton and Oxford 260 

Sir Walter Scott— His Schools and Readings 262 

Lord Hill, the Waterloo Hero 267 

Coleridge at Christ's Hospital and Cambridge 269 

Robert Southey at his Schools, and at Oxford 271 

Charles Lamb at Christ's Hospital 274 

&r Humphry Davy at Penzance— His Schools and Self-education. . . . 277 
George Stephenson, the Railway Engineer — His Schoolmasters and 

Self-tuition 281 

(Note— James Watt) 283 

Boyhood and Early Death of Henry Kirke White 285 

Sir Robert Peel at Harrow and Oxford 288 

Lord Byron at Aberdeen, Harrow, and Cambridge 290 

Dr. Thomas Arnold at Winchester and Oxford 293 

Sir Henry Havelock at the Charter-house 295 

Appendix : University Honors — Tripos 301, 302 

St. Paul's School founded 302 



SCHOOL-DAYS OF EMINENT MEN. 



Irogms of Ciiutatton;. 



EDUCATION OF THE EARLY BRITOXS. 

TO trace the modes of teaching which were practiced among 
a rude people inhabiting caves, or at best, houses built of 
stakes and wattles, in forest glades, has been an inquiry attended 
with slight results. Such a people inhabited Britain ; and all that 
we can gather amid the glimmerings of the earliest history of 
its aborigines is, that skill in certain field sports, healthful pas- 
times, and domestic amusements, formed the only approach to 
education which the youth received from their parents. They 
knew not how to read — indeed, they held it dishonorable to 
learn — but they sung and danced to music, and learned hymns 
by heart. 

The early British games consisted in lifting up great weights, 
running, leaping, swimming, wrestling, and riding ; and it is 
supposed, charioteering, or the skillful driving and management 
of carriages. The other pastimes were playing with the sword, 
and buckler, and spear ; coursing, fishing, and fowling ; poetical 
composition ; playing on, and singing to, the harp, etc. 

Herodian mentions iron girdles as used by the Britons for 
keeping the bellies of the youth within its size : this they were 
also to effect by fasting, running, riding, and swimming; all 
which Giraldus mentions of the Welsh and Irish. We discover 
no traces of the use of letters among the Britons previous to 
their subjugation by the Romans, and their subsequent inter- 
course with that extraordinary people ; for although alphabets 
have been produced and attributed to them, yet the display of 
these alphabets has been neither accompanied, nor their exist- 
ence confirmed, by the exhibition of a single manuscript. 



2 School-Days of Eminent 3Ien, 



SCHOOLS OF THE DRUIDS. 

The native place and stronghold of Druidism was Britain. 
The Druids were the Priests of the Ancient Britons ; and the 
picture which Caesar has drawn of the Druidical sacrifices of 
burning men alive in huge images of wickerwork, leaves upon 
childhood a terrific impression of their cruelties ; whilst the ex- 
istence of Stonehenge and other worship-temples attributed to 
the Druids, indicates the vast power of these "ministers of 
sacred things." But this was a power founded in the exclusive 
possession of knowledge. Accordingly, they were the deposito- 
ries of whatever learning existed in the country ; and they are 
stated to have had numerous schools, where they taught " many 
things respecting the stars and their motion, respecting the ex- 
tent of the world and of our earth, respecting the nature of 
things, and respecting the power and the majesty of the im- 
mortal gods." These doctrines were supposed to have origi- 
nated in Britain ; and in Csesar's time those Gauls who wished 
to study them, visited our island for that purpose. 

The leading maxim which the Druids gave to the people was 
well calculated to maintain their power; for they taught that the 
fertility of the fields depended upon the riches of themselves. 
Amongst other rites, they cut the mistletoe, with a sickle of pure 
gold, upon the sixth day of the moon ; and, in all probability, 
this is the origin of hanging the mistletoe in our houses at Christ- 
mas. The oak is also said to have been venerated amongst the 
Druids, and it is the figurative as well as the real monarch of our 
forests to this day ; but, beyond a few particulars preserved by 
Greek and Roman writers, we know little or nothing concerning 
the tenets of the Druids. " Their doctrines," says Sir F. Pal- 
grave, " were not reduced into writing, but preserved by oral 
tradition ; and when the Druidical priesthood was extinguished, 
their lore was lost, excepting the few passages which may be 
collected from the compositions of the British Bards, and the 
proverbial triads (hymns) of the Cymri." 

The Druidfi were the only physicians, and blended some knowledge of natural medi- 
cines with the general superstitions by which they were characterized. Certain herbs 
formed the chief of their medicines. Their famous Mistletoe, or all-heal, was consid- 
ered as a certain cure in many diseases, an antidote to poison, and a sure remedy 
against infection. > (A nostrum called Heal-all is compounded at this day.) Another 
plant, called Samoclus, or Marchwort, which grew in damp places, was believed to pre- 
serve the health of swine and oxen, when it had been bruised and put in their water- 
troughs. But it was required to be gathered fasting, with the left hand, without look- 
ing back when it was being plucked. A kind of hedge hyssop called Selago, was 
esteemed to be a general charm and preservation from sudden accidents and misfor- 
tunes ; and it was to be gathered with nearly the same ceremonies as the mistletoe. 
To these might be added Vervain, the herb Britannica, which was either the great 
water-dock or scurvy grass; and several other plants; the virtues of which, however, 
were greatly augmented by the rites in plucking them: superstitions not entirely out 
of use whilst the old herbals were regarded as books of medicine. 



Progress of Education. 



THE KOMAN-BRITISH SCHOOLS. 

The records of the state of Britain during the occupation of 
a portion of the country by the Romans for nearly four centu- 
ries and a half, afford but few glimpses of the education of the 
people. That the Romans erected schools and academies in 
our island, there can be little doubt. The remains of the en- 
gineering labors of this mighty people consist of massive walls 
and other military works, and frequently upon their roads we 
lay the railway of our times ; we also find traces of curious art 
in the pavements of baths, the floors of mansions, and the frag- 
ments of temples rich in the false glories of Pagan worship : 
there is abundant evidence of luxury, and the iron hand of mili- 
tary rule ; but the most speculative archaeologist will search in 
vain for the remains of a Roman school. Yet, the Roman 
language was that of administration, and most probably that of 
judicial proceedings also ; whilst all natives, or persons of mixed 
blood, who were allowed to aspire to any civil employment, 
must have learned the Roman language and laws. Agricola, in 
his second campaign, a.d. 79, overran the whole country, and 
induced many of the chiefs to allow their sons to receive a Ro- 
man education ; so that they who had lately scorned to learn the 
language of their conquerors became fond of acquiring the 
Roman eloquence ; but Tacitus says : " all this innovation was 
by the inexperienced styled politeness and humanity, when it 
was indeed part of their bondage." To the above period also 
belongs the first introduction of Christianity by St. Augustine, 
which necessarily was accompanied with a knowledge of the 
Greek language. 

INTRODUCTION OF WRITING. 

Writing is supposed to have been very little practiced in 
England before the mission of St. Augustine, a.d. 595; but after 
that time many Saxon manuscripts, chiefly on religious subjects, 
were executed on parchment, stained with rich colors, written in 
golden characters, and decorated with gilding and illuminations. 
Saxon Writing was of the five following kinds: 1. Roman Sax- 
on, with uncial or initial letters, interspersed with smaller. 2. 
Set Saxon, with square or cornered capitals in the titles of 
books, and the first letters often in the shape of men and ani- 
mals. 3. Running-hand Saxon, with numerous contractions, 
which render them difficult to be read. 4. Mixed Saxon, partly 
Roman, Lombardic, and Saxon. 5. Elegant Saxon, more beau- 
tiful than the contemporary writing of either France, Italy, or 



'J}^^fM ^r 'Ammcw Jbm* 



1 



Gf4t»MiT : it kst^l until the Nomian invasion, and wms Mitiivljr 
disus^H.! K torv the twelfth century. 

Vhe Writi]i|( iolrodiMed by TViUiam I. i> ^\ mmonly calltHi 
Nvriuan, though th<? ehaw«>ter? iire nearly Lorabarvl; and they 
vrer^ usevi in charters till ihe reipi ot* Edward 111., with very 
. The hand calleil uivxlern Gothic was introductxl 
„ .. . ._ •' t* - twelfth century, though it had Km^u prac- 

ticed ia 1^1 It the close ot* the ninth. The I^ormans 

also brvHigii; ^lom of using seals, benring the 

iojT •> « 0* In - - \; instead of the Anglo-Saxan 

oi:> .:T.\i. 

FPrOATIOX OF THE CLK15GT. 

-. Writing (.says Sir F. Palgrave), though no 
\:^ n the Jt^agau age, wer^ still acciuirtments 
..-.-. - ..V ..^. ov ' -'-^ the clergy. Hence the word " Cleri- 

cus,'* or ** CleA.* synonymous with penman, the soBse 

is is stili moc4 usuaU^ employed. If a man couki 
.. - ..V V . V ven read, his knowledge was considered as proof pre- 
sumptive that he was in holy order?. It kings and great men 
h»i occasion to autkentkate anj document^ thej subscribed the 
$1511 of the Ciuss oppo^le to the f4aee where the *^ Clerk** had 
written their namew Hence we say, to ;ptjfM a deed or a letter. 
Illiterate peqple stiQ make their signs oar Modbs; in this manner 
yust as Ofei used to do» by drawiu^ a X>, by the side whereof 
tlie lawyer s clerk adds their Christian and saraames. 

TIm iuty, or people 1^0 were not c)erks« did not le^ any 
w^oit necessity ibr the use of letters. Commerce was earned 
on princ^pall)' by truck or barter, or by p ajmen ts in ready 
money : and sums were cast up^ as amo^g tibe Bomans, upon 
an abacus, or accounting-table, the amount bdng de n o t ed by 
KMUtiri or amibur tokens. From the difficuhy of communicating 
between place and place^ oommon people had seldom any o^por- 
tnnitT of cottTeyins inteifigenee to abs^^mt friend Iftm j im- 
portant transactions^ whieb now rei^uire writing, cooM thai be 
e lect ed bj word of mouthy or, as lawyers say, by por ai r . At the 
present day, it you wish to buy a hor^e, it is sofficimt lor you 
to pay the money to the owner : he delivers the horse to you, 
you ride him to the stable^ and the bargain is con^pleted. But 
if you w^ to buy a fi^ a huge deed must be drawn br a 
sa&ilor. and engrossed upon a pairbment^ which is stamped — 
money being paid to ^oremment fer the same. This k eayed 
acmnreyaacf. Nov, in earfy times, the horse and the field m%ht 
be i mi Myrf with equal simplicity, and without any writing what- 
ever. Vhen Imd was soM, the owner qit a turf ftom the y ccn - 



Progress of Education, 5 

fiward, and cast it in the lap of the purchaser, as a token that 
th(; f)0.sHe.s.sion of the earth was transferred ; or he tore off tlie 
l>raneh of a tree, and put it in the hand of the f^rantee, to show 
that the hitter was to be entitled to all the products of the soil. 
And wlien the pu)*chaser of a house received seizin, or possession, 
the key of the door, or a Ijundle of thatch plucked from the roof, 
Ki;^nifi(Ml that the dwelling had been yi(;lded up to him ; the in- 
tent of these symbols being to supply the place of writing, by 
impressing the transaction ujKjn the recollection of the witnesses 
who were called together upon the occasion.* 

CANTERBURr AND O'TUYAi MONASTIC SCHOOLS IN THE 
SEVENTH CENTURY. 

One of the oldest schools of which anything is known, is the 
school of Canterbury, which is stated to liave been probably 
established by St. Augustine. About a quarter of a century 
afterward, Sigebert, King of the East-Angles, is stated by liede 
to have founded an institution for the instruction of youth of his 
dominions similar to those he had seen in France. At Canter- 
bury, St. Augustine was succeeded by Archbishop Theodore, who, 
with his learned friend Adrian, delivered instructions to crowds 
of pupils, not only in divinity, but also in astronomy, medicine, 
arithmetic, and the Greek and Latin languages. This school 
certainly existed for a long time, and there is a record of a suit 
before the Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1321, between the rec- 
tor of the grammar-schools of the city (supposed to be Theo- 
dore's school, or its representative) and the rector of St. Martin's, 
who kept a school in right of the church. This school, prob- 
ably, existed till the Reformation ; at least, the present King's 
School of Canterbury was established by Henry VIIL, and prob- 
ably on the ruins of the old school. 

Schools now began to multiply in other parts, and were gen- 
erally to be found in all the monasteries and at the bishops' 
seats. Of these episcopal and monastic schools, that founded 
by Bishop Benedict in his abbey at Wearmouth, where Bede 
was educated, and that which Archbishop Egbert established at 
York, where Alcuin studied, were the most famous. Alcuin, in 
a poem wherein he describes his own education at York, enu- 
merates the studies there to have been, besides grammar, rhet- 
oric, and poetry, " the harmony of the sky, the labor of the sun 
and moon, the five zones, the seven wandering planets; the laws, 
risings, and settings of the stars, and the aerial motions of the 

* Sir F. Palgrave'a Historj of England. Anglo-Saxon Period. 



6 Scliool-Days of Eminent 31en. 

sea ; earthquakes ; the nature of man, cattle, birds, and wild 
beasts, with their various kind and forms ; and the sacred Scrip- 
tures." 

RISE OF ANGLO-SAXON SCHOOLS. 

The Latinity which Agricola had so established in this island, 
as to make it rather a Roman than a British nation, had become 
almost extinct before the time of Alfred. Some native rays of 
intellectual light had, however, been shed upon Britain even 
before this dark period ; and the literature of the Anglo-Saxons 
must be dated from their conversion to Christianity. When St. 
Augustine came into England, the Pope sent him several books, 
some of which are even now extant; and in the seventh century, 
a desire for learning began to inspire the Anglo-Saxons, when 
the Kinf' of East Ansrlia established in his dominions a school 
for the instruction of youth. The venerable Bede, " the Wise 
Saxon," who flourished in the eighth century, represents many 
persons as reading and studying the Scriptures. Egbert, Arch- 
bishop of York, in 712, had a library of the Fathers, and sev- 
eral of the ancient and later classics. What the value of such 
a collection must have been may be gathered from the fact, that 
many years afterward a Countess of Anjou gave 200 sheep, 
and a large parcel of rich furs, for a volume of Homilies. Eg- 
bert's library was burnt in 1067 ; but the catalogue was pre- 
served by his pupil, Alcuinus. The wit and learning of the 
archbishop induced the Emperor Charlemagne (^ivho really could 
not lurite his oivn name) to invite him to his court ; and in one 
of his letters to this prince, Egbert solicits him to send the noble 
youth of France and Germany to be educated in the excellent 
schools of Britain. 

For many centuries knowledge was confined to the clergy ; 
although under this denomination were comprehended many who 
did not exercise the office of religious ministry. Among the 
Anglo-Saxons, we find children learning the psalms and some 
books by heart ; and brought up religiously at home under their 
parents or masters, either in monasteries, or under bishops, who 
either made of them monks or clerks, or sent them, when young 
men, armed, to the King; and so minute are the accounts, that 
figs, grapes, nuts, almonds, apples, pears and money are specified 
as the school rewards. 

Needle- work was at this early period an important branch of 
female education ; and the English work was celebrated abroad 
for its excellence. An Anglo-Saxon lady usually embroidered 
upon a curtain some famous action of her husband's life. Maid- 
servants used to work with their mistresses; and needle-work was 



Progress of Education. 7 

practiced by men. The patterns of work were drawn in books, 
which, being cut to pieces, were used by women to work upon 
and transfer to their samplers. The working of flowers was 
particularly specified ; and we find one kind practiced " in the 
manner of a vineyard." 

THE SCHOOLS OF ALFRED. 

Such was the state of knowledge in the reign of Alfred the 
Great — deemed in his time the wisest man in England. Although 
the son of a king, he was wholly uninstructed until he had reached 
the age of twelve years, when he was taught in hunting, build- 
ing, and psalmody. Though he could not read, however, he list- 
ened day and night to the verses which were recited by min- 
strels and glee-men, the masters of Anglo-Saxon song ; and a 
volume of Anglo-Saxon poetry shown to him by his mother, and 
which became his own as soon as he could read it, so encouraged 
his love of' p(5etry that he contrived to compose verses at intervals 
throughout his busy life. The second volume which Alfred ob- 
tained was a selection of psalms and daily prayers according to 
the ancient usage of the church. 

Alfred was born at Wantage, on the borders of the Vale of the White Horse, in Berk- 
shire, in 849. As a royal seat, Wantage was, probably, a place of some consequence in 
the Saxon times; it is cimjectured to have been a lloman station, and upon the site of a 
vallum of this period, the palace in which Alfred was born is supposed to have stood. 
The event of his birth has been commemorated in a manner worthy of its interest. 
Wantage had its grammar-school founded in the reign of Elizabeth: it fell into decay, 
but has been re-founded under the following circumstances. On the 8th of September, 
1840, the thousandth anniversary of th« birth of Alfred, that event was celebrated in 
the place of his birth. After divine service in Wantage Church, there were addresse.s 
and inu-<ic in tlie Town-hall; a procession to '' King Alfred's Well;" distribution of food 
to the poor of Wantage; an ox was roasted whole by the aid of the steam-engine; and 
a merlal (believed to b>^ the only one ever struck in honor of Alfred) was struck for this 
"Anghj-haxon Jubilee." The commemoration took a more permanent form in the fol- 
lowing year. IS.iO, when a fund having been raised in augmentation of the limited sum 
api)ropriated for the grammar-school since the reign of Elizabeth, there was laid the 
first stone of a new school building which has been completed. It is in the Pointed 
ftyle of the thirteenth century, and accommodates seventy scholars, of which number 
thirty are boarders. Thus have the Governors of the Wantage Town Lands revived their 
grammar-school, and provided for the middle classes of their neighborhood a cheap 
and efficient course of instruction, embracing not only a rudimental acquaintance with 
the Latin language, but the addition of a sound modern education. 

Alfred is related to have never been without a book in his 
bosom, in which volume he entered any memorable passage which 
occurred in conversation, until it was entirely full, after which a 
new book was made, by the advice of Asser, his tutor, and filled 
with diversified extracts on all subjects ; this the King called 
his Hand-book. Asser wrote the life of Alfred, wherein is a pass- 
age which has given rise to a dispute as to the superior antiquity 
of the schools of Oxford and Cambridge. The authentic proofs 
of the latter do not extend beyond the seventh century ; whilst the 
evidence of Asser shows that there were public schools at Oxford 



8 School-Days of Eminent Men. 



n 



at least in the fifth or sixth century ; but this evidence is ques- 
tionable. 

The harp at this period was a badge of rank, for, bj the Brit- 
ish law, a slave might not use it ; and no one was esteemed a 
gentleman unless he possessed a harp, and could play upon it. 
Alfred's skill in this art led to one of his most brilliant victories. 
At Eddington, near Hungerford, in Berkshire, in the disguise of 
a harper, in 878, he visited the Danish camp, and obtained infor- 
mation which enabled him to surprise and entirely defeat the enemy. 

We next find Alfred actively engaged in " the diffusion of 
knowledge" among his people. No Council or Board of Educa- 
tion in our time can have exceeded the zeal of our Anglo-Saxon 
sovereign of ten centuries since. Alfred addressed to the bishops 
a circular letter earnestly recommending the translation of " use- 
ful books into the language which we all understood ; so that all 
the youth of England, but more especially those who are of gen- 
tle kind, and at ease in their circumstances, may be grounded in 
letters — for they cannot profit in any pursuit until they are well 
able to read English." Yet, gross was the ignorance of those 
days. " When I took the kingdom," says Alfred, " very few on 
this side of the Humber, very few beyond, not one that I could 
recollect south of the Thames, could understand their prayers in 
English, or could translate a letter from Latin into English." 
To supply this deficiency, Alfred employed such scholars as the 
time afforded ; he himself acquired sufficient knowlege of Latin 
in his thirty-eighth year to translate the only book of Saxon his- 
tory then extant ; he translated other works of great learning, 
and attempted a comj)lete version of the Bible, the finishing of 
which was prevented by his early death. He even enforced ed- 
ucation by refusing to promote the uneducated, as well as by his 
own example. He insisted that the " ministers," or the persons 
whom he employed, should qualify themselves for their office; 
and in case of non-compliance he rejected them. Aldermen, and 
mayors, and governors, w^ere compelled to go to school for this 
late instruction, to them a grievous penance, rather than give 
up their emoluments and office ; and at an advanced period of 
his reign, Alfred, "the truth-teller," thanked God that those who 
sat in the chair of the instructor were then capable of teaching. 

Alfred is believed to have re-established many of the old mo- 
nastic and episcopal schools, Asser expressly states that he 
founded a seminary for sons of the nobility, to the support of 
which he devoted one-eighth part of his whole revenue. Hither 
even some noblemen repaired who had far outgrown their youth, 
but scarcely or not at all begun their acquaintance with books. 
This school was attended not only by the sons of almost all the 



Progress of Education. 9 

nobility of the realm, but also by many of the inferior classes. 
It was provided with several masters ; and this seminary is main- 
tained by many antiquaries to have been the foundation of the 
University of Oxford. 

Alfred's Schools were intended from the first for every person 
of rank or substance, who, either from age or want of capacity, 
was unable to learn or read himself, and who was compelled to 
send to school either his son or a kinsman, or if he had neither, 
a servant, that he might at least be read to by some one ; for, 
that rank was no guarantee of learning, we have already seen ; 
and Anglo-Saxon charters exist, which, instead of the names of 
kings, exhibit their marks, used, as it is frankly explained, in 
consequence of their ignorance of letters. 

The means by which this patriotic King thus benefited his 
people are preserved to us. He usually divided his time into 
three equal portions : one was passed in sleep and recruiting his 
body by diet and exercise ; another in the dispatch of business ; 
a third in study and devotion ; and that he might the more ex- 
actly measure the hours, he employed burning tapers of equal 
length ; for, at this time, we must recollect clocks and watches 
were unknown. And by such a regular distribution of his time, 
though he suffered much by illness, Alfred, who fought in person 
fifty-six battles by sea and land, was able, during a life of no 
extraordinary length, to acquire more knowledge, and even to 
compose more books, than studious men, who, in more fortunate 
ages, have made literature their uninterrupted study. Transla- 
tions of the Bible were multiplied through Alfred's assiduity ; 
and from this, or the Anglo-Saxon age, down to that of Wick- 
liffe (or, for nearly five centuries), we in England can show such 
a succession of versions of the Bible in metre, and in prose, as 
are not to be equaled amongst any other nation in Europe. 
Alfred is believed to have given a large estate for a single book 
on a learned subject ; a bargain which may have given rise to 
the saying, " Learning is better than house and land." 

Alfred's children, six in number, were taught Anglo-Saxon 
prose, poetry and psalms, ^thelweard, Alfred's youngest son, 
received a sort of public education : he was committed to proper 
teachers, with almost all the noble children of the province, and 
with many of inferior rank ; they were all instructed in Latin 
and Saxon, and w^riting ; and when their matured age gave the 
requisite strength, in gymnastics and archery,* as auxiliary to 

* Roger Aschain (in his Toxophilus) supposes the English to have learned Archery 
from tiie Saxons; hence, by the ancient English laws, there is a more severe penalty for 
hurting the finger, wliich is necessary for letting the arrow fly, than for the maiming of 
any of the others. Barrington traces Bow to the German word bogen, and Arrow to the 



10 Scliool-Days of Eminent Men. 

warlike habits. Nor was Alfred's example lost upon his suc- 
cessors. Wolstan says of Ethel wold — " It was always delightful 
to him to teach children and youth, and to construe Latin books 
to them in English, and explain to them the rules of grammar 
and Latin versification." 

ST. DUNSTAN, THE SCHOLAR OF GLASTONBURY. 

About six miles from the ancient city of Wells, in Somerset- 
shire, are the picturesque ruins of Glastonbury Abbey, once the 
richest abbey in the kingdom, and the most magnificent pile of 
Anglo-Norman ecclesiastical architecture. In the village hard 
by was born St. Dunstan, a.d. 925. His earliest instruction in 
the learning of his time he received in the monastery. The 
place was not then conventually regulated ; and thither came 
chiefly from Ireland many illustrious men versed in sacred and 
secular science, and there opened schools, admitting the children 
of the nobility. Among these scholars was St. Dunstan. He 
applied himself to "the sciences of the philosophers" with un- 
common ardor : thus he learned arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, 
and music. Like the prophet David, he would sometimes seize 
his psaltery, strike the harp, swell the organ, or touch the cymbal. 

Upon quitting school, he passed a few years at the court of 
King Athelstan, when upon some affront, he returned to Glas- 
tonbury, and having in early youth received the tonsure there, 
he built himself a cell or hermitage, with an oratory, and in the 
intervals of his devotional austerities, employed himself in such 
manual arts as were useful to the service of the church — in the 
formation of crosses, vials, censers, vestments, etc. : he could 
paint, write a beautiful hand, carve figures, and work in gold, 
silver, brass, or iron ; and after Alfred, the liberal arts were much 
indebted to his zeal : he was altogether one of the most memora- 
ble men of his time. 

Apart from its interest as an ancient seat of learning, Glaston- 
bury is one of the most hallowed spots in the kingdom ; and as 
the wind sighs through its lone arches and hoary stones, you 
reflect that here lie the bodies of Joseph of Arimathea, King 
Edgar, and King Arthur ; and numberless martyrs and bishops, 
and other men of mark. The building which now serves as the 
George Inn was in the monastic times an hospital for pilgrims 
to the shrine of St. Joseph. His chapel, and the monastery 
kitchen, remain. 

Saxon apepe. Archery in war seems to have been disuseii immediately after the Norman 
Conquest, and to have been revived by the Crusaders: they had, doubtless, felt the 
effects of it from the Saracens, (who had probably derived it from the Tartliians) — Ed- 
ward I. was wounded by one of their arrows; and in this King's reig-n was formed a so- 
ciety called the Archers of Finsbury. The same society, having laid asiile the bow and 
a. row, became subsequently the Artillery Company of the City of London. 



Progress of Education, 11 



KING CANUTE A TOET. 

Under the Danish dynasty, little seems to have been done for 
the promotion of letters, if we except the brilliant example of 
Canute. He was successful in war; and in peace, humane, 
gentle, and religious. He was a liberal patron of men of letters : 
he afforded the amplest encouragement to Scandinavian poetry, 
and Olenes names eight Danish poets who flourished at his Court. 
Sir Bulwer Lytton has an ingenious speculation upon the great 
influence which the poetry of the Danes has had upon our 
early national muse ; and he has little doubt but that to its 
source may be traced the minstrelsy of our borders, and the Scot- 
tish Lowlands ; while even in the central counties, the example 
and exertions of Canute must have had considerable effect upon 
the taste and spirit of our Scopec. Canute himself, too, was the 
author of a popular ballad, which long after his death remained 
a favorite with the people. 

The verse that has been preservefl of this song composed by Canute as he was one 
day rowing on the Nen, while the holy music came floating on the air, and along the 
■water from the neighboring minster of Ely — a song %¥liich, we are told by the historian, 
continued to his day, after the lapse of a century and a half, to be a universally popu- 
lar favorite — is very nearly such English as was written in the fourteenth century. This 
fragment is as follows : 

Merie sungen the munneches binnen Ely 
Tha Cnut Ching rew there by; 
Koweth, cnihtes, noer the land. 
And here we thes muneches saeng. 

That is literally: 

Merril}' (sweetly) sung the monks within Ely 
(When) that Canute king rowed thereby: 
Kow, Knights, near the land, 
And hear we these monks' song. 

B*'ing in verse and in rhyme, it is probable that the words are reported in their 
original form; they cannot, at any rate, be much altered. — Literature and Learning of 
England. By G. L. Craik, M.A. 

The Danes were, in general, the destroyers of learning at this 
period ; nearly all the monasteries and schools connected with 
them throughout the kingdom being either actually laid in ashes 
by these Northern invaders, or deserted in the general terror 
and destruction occasioned by their attacks. Under Canute, 
who was a wise as well as a powerful sovereign, the schools de- 
stroyed during the Danish wars, no doubt, rose again and flour- 
ished. 

THE EARLIEST BOOKS. 

Staves, or rods of wood, appear to have preceded the introduc- 
tion of school-books ; for the Egyptian papyrus was rarely to be 
obtained in Europe, and parchment or vellum was too costly for 



12 School-Days of Eminent Men. ^H 

ordinary use ; so that a painstaking clerk could find it worth his 
while to erase the writing of an old manuscript in order to use 
the blank vellum for another writing. The onlj learned works 
were written in Latin, which was used in all documents relating 
to church affairs, but could only be acquired with great difficulty 
by the people. Copious dictionaries were then unknown ; al- 
though there might have been a meager vocabulary, of which 
perhaps three or four copies existed in a whole kingdom ; but a 
stock of words could only be acquired from a teacher, and by 
memory. 

The studies of this period must have been greatly impeded by 
the scarcity and high price of books ; although their multiplica- 
tion went on much more rapidly than formerly. Few of the 
monasteries were without libraries of greater or less extent. 
A convent without a library, it used to be proverbially said, 
was like a castle without an armory. When the monastery of 
Croydon was burnt, in 1091, its library, according to Ingulphus, 
consisted of 900 volumes, of which 300 were very large. To 
these instances may be added that the founder of the Abbey of 
Wearmouth, about the end of the seventh century, collected a 
considerable library, at the cost not only of much money, but also 
of great exertion, he having made five journeys to Rome for the 
purchase of books and other items for the establishment. Bede 
records that the founder sold one of his volumes, a work on cos- 
mography, to his sovereign, Alfred of Northumberland, for eight 
hides of land. 

In every great abbey there was an apartment called the Scriptorium^ where many 
writers were constantly buried in transcribing not only the service-books for the choir, 
but books for the library. "The Scriptorium of St. Alban's Abbey was built by Abbot 
Paulin, a Norman, who ordered many volumes to be written there, about the year 1009. 
Archbishop Lanfranc furnished the copies. Estates were often granted for the support 

of the Scriptorium Some of the classics were written in the English monasteries 

very early. Henry, a Benedictine monk of Hyde Abbey, near Winchester, transcribed 
in the year 1178, Terence, Boethius, Suetonius, and Claudian. Of these he formed one 
book, illuminating the initials, and forming the brazen bosses of the cover with his 
own hands." The monks were accustomed both to illuminate and to bind books, as 
well as to transcribe them. "The scarcity of parchment undoubtedly prevented the 
transcription of many other books in these societies. About the year il20, one Master 
Hugh, being appointed to the convent of St. Edmondsbury, in Suffolk, to write and illu- 
minate a grand copy of the Bible for their library, could procure no parchment for this 
purpose in England." (Warton^s Introduction of Learning into England.) Mr. Hallara 
supposes the deficiency to have been of skins beautiful enough for the purpose : it can- 
not be meant that there was no parchment for legal instruments. Paper made of cotton, 
however, was certainly in common use in the twelfth century, though no evidence 
exists that that manufactured from linen rags was known till about the middle of the 
thirteenth. 

THE SAXON LANGUAGE. — FORMATION OF THE ENGLISH 

LANGUAGE. 

The primitive character of the population of Britain having 
been effaced by its Roman occupation, its great masters w^ere 
eventually overrun and conquered by the Teutons, whose three 



Progress of JEducation. 13 

distinct tribes of the Low Germans — the Angles, the Saxons, 
and the Jutes — made themselves masters of our island. They 
naturally brought with them a change of language : the Teutonic 
superseded the Latin, one cause of which was that the popula- 
tion of Britain had been continually and largely increased by the 
immigration of German settlers, so that the German spirit was 
far more powerful than the Roman. The three different branches 
of Low Germans could understand one another with not much 
more difficulty than at the present day a Lancashire peasant 
would discourse with a Yorkshireman. There was, doubtless, 
a strong difference of dialect between the languages spoken by 
the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes, and these divisions were 
the foundation of the great classes of the modern dialects of 
England. 

The Jutes, represented chiefly by the people of Kent, were 
the least numerous, and exercised no permanent literary in- 
fluence upon the great Anglo-Saxon confederacy. It was the 
Angles, numerically by far the most powerful of the Teutonic 
settlers, who first took the lead in intelligence and in literature. 
To them chiefly belong the earliest literary productions of the 
Anglo-Saxons, and the oldest Anglo-Saxon traditions known ; and 
their influence over the rest was so great, that not only did they 
accept from them the general title of English, but even the na- 
tions of the Continent who had generally preserved the Roman 
language, generally agreed in giving to the Teutonic population 
of Britain the name of Angli. Thus we derive from this one 
branch of the triple composition of our race, the national name 
of which we are proud, that of Englishmen, and it is from them 
that our language is called English. 

Nevertheless, the Anglian division of the race fell in the course 
of the eighth century under the superior influence of the Saxons, 
and Wessex, or the kingdom of the West Saxons, not only gave 
us finally our line of Kings, but furnished us with the model of 
our language and literature. The written English of the pres- 
ent day is founded upon that dialect in w^hich King Alfred 
wrote ; and with this change in the predominance of race, the 
terra Saxon came into more frequent use to designate the Teu- 
tonic population of this island ; and as there continued to be 
Saxons on the Continent as well as in England, it has become 
the practice to call our own ancestors, by way of distinction and 
not as indicating an amalgamation of race, the Anglo-SaxOns, 
that is, the Saxons of England. Still, it must be borne in mind 
that our knowledge of the Anglo-Saxon language is, after all, im- 
perfect ; for our nomenclature is made up from written docu- 
ments of a partial description, and there no doubt existed a great 



14 School-Days of Eminent Men. 

number of words in the Anglo-Saxon language which are now 
entirely lost. No doubt, many words now found in the 
English language, and especially in the provincial dialects, of 
which the origin is unknown, had their equivalents in pure 
Anglo-Saxon. This language was not influenced by the Danes ; 
and that which our forefathers spoke in the middle of the 
eleventh century was the same Low German dialect which they 
had brought with them into the island, with certain changes of 
time and circumstances. At this period, the Norman Conquest 
brought a new language, French, as it was then talked and 
written in Normandy ; and the resulting dialect, Anglo-Norman, 
continued during two centuries to be exclusively the language of 
the aristocracy of England. Meanwhile, the Anglo-Saxon, or as 
we must henceforward call it, the English tongue, was not aban- 
doned or disused ; for the Anglo-Saxon grammar of the Latin 
language by Alfric, continued to be used in the English schools 
till late in the twelfth century. To the first half of this century 
is ascribed a manuscript of Alfric's grammar, with an interlinear 
gloss of some of the Saxon words in Anglo-Norman. Hicks, the 
Anglo-Saxon scholar, had in his possession the above manuscript; 
and Sir Thomas Phillipps found among the archives of Worcester 
cathedral some leaves of a copy of Alfric's grammar, written in 
the degraded form of the Anglo-Saxon language which prevailed 
in the middle and latter half of the twelfth century. From 
various literary remains it is evident that the use of the English 
language, during the twelfth century, and the first half of the 
thirteenth, was by no means confined to the lower classes of 
society, but it prevailed generally among the middle and edu- 
cated classes, among the clergy and in the monastic houses, at 
least those devoted to females.* 

The English Language consists of about 38,000 words. This 
includes, of course, not only radical words, but all derivatives, 
except the preterites and participles of verbs ; to which must be 
added some few terms, which, though set down in the dictiona- 
ries, are either obsolete, or have never ceased to be considered 
foreign. Of these, about 23,000, or nearly five-eighths, are of 
Anglo-Saxon origin.! The majority of the rest, in what pro- 
portions we cannot say, are Latin and Greek : Latin, however, 
has the larger share. 

* Abridged from a very able Lecture on the History of the English Language, delivered 
before the Historic Society of Lancashire, by Thomas Wright, Esq., M.A., F.S.A., etc. 
See Transactions of the Historic Society, Vol. ix. 

t Dr. Boswortb, the eminent Anglo-Saxon scholar, has published a work by King 
Alfred in the original Anglo Saxon and in an English version. The text is from two ex 
i.sting manuscript copies : the subject is a description of Europe, Asia, and Africa, with 
the voyages of Ohthere and Wulfstan. 



Progress of Education, 15 



EDUCATION OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR. 

In the curious old town of Falaise, in Normandj, is shown 
a small house-front which exhibits a bust of William the 
Conqueror, whose name the house bears. But "the cradle 
of the Conqueror" is a small chamber in the thickness of the 
wall of the Norman ducal palace or castle at Falaise. "It 
was in this narrow room," says Miss Costello, "once said to 
have been adorned with gold and vermillion, and other gay hues, 
that a child was born in secresy and mystery, and that by the 
imperfect light his beautiful mother looked upon the features of 
the future hero of Normandy." That good fortune which never 
deserted William in after-life, shone upon his infancy. He soon 
became a favorite with his father, and was carefully nurtured 
and brought up in the castle, where princely attendance was 
lavished upon him, and up to his ninth year his father bestowed 
the utmost care upon his education. Pie was early inured to mili- 
tary exercise : at the age of five he is said to have commanded a 
battalion of children, at the head of which he w^ent through the 
usual evolutions. At the age of nine he could already read and 
explain Ca?sar's Commentaries : he was removed by his father to 
the French court, where his education was carefully completed 
with the aid of the first masters. At Paris, he w^as brought up 
with the young French princes, where he received instruction in 
the military schools ; and he was surpassed by none of his youth- 
ful comrades in the varied accomplishments of feudal nobility, or in 
extensive reading and sound study of the military art. The inter- 
vals between his studies he spent either in field-sports, especially 
hawking and hunting, or in evolutions with the troops, of which 
he was remarkably fond. Sometimes also he would attend the 
envoys of the French King in their missions to surrounding 
courts and states, and thus became instructed in diplomacy. 
Meanwhile, he was temperate and active, and assiduously eager 
in the acquisition of fresh knowledge. Of William's genius 
there is ample record : the Norman writers praise him as a wise 
and pious King ; the Chronicle of the Sea Kings of Norway 
describes him as " a very wise man, but not considered a man to 
be trusted ;" and even the Saxon Chronicler, who had lived 
some time in his Court, says, " he was wise and rich, mild to 
good men, but beyond all measure severe to those who withstood 
his will." 

LANFRANC — INGULPHUS AND THE SCHOOLS OF CROYLAND. 

William the Conqueror patronized and loved letters. Many 
of the Norman prelates preferred in England by him were 



16 School-Bays of Eminent Men. 

polite scholars. Herman, a bishop of Salisbury, founded aW 
noble library in his cathedral. Godfrey, prior of St. Swith- 
in's, at Winchester, was an elegant epigrammatist, and wrote 
with the smartness and ease of Martial. Geoffrey, another 
learned Norman, established a school at Dunstable, where he 
composed a play, which was acted by his scholars, dressed in 
character in copes borrowed from the neighboring abbey of St. 
Alban's. 

One of the most learned men of this age was Lanfranc, a 
native of Lombardy, and born of a noble family. Having 
obtained the best education that the universities of Italy could 
afford, he practiced as a lawyer in his native city of Pavia. He 
next quitted the bar, passed the Alps, and settling in Normandy, 
opened a school in Avranches. He suddenly disappeared, and 
in three years was discovered in the small and poor monastery of 
Bee, where he had become a monk, and had risen to the office of 
prior. He then opened a school there, was quickly surrounded 
with scholars, while his fame as a teacher enriched the monastery. 
His natural arrogance and deep policy was shown in an incident 
which occurred on a visit made him by Bishop Herfast, with a 
numerous company of Duke WilHam's courtiers. When they 
appeared in his lecture-room, he had the audacity to hand the 
bishop a spelling-book. This insult was resented : complaint 
was made to AVilliam, the farm of the monastery was burned, and 
Lanfranc was ordered to fly from Normandy. He mounted on 
a poor lame horse, rode to the Court, and told the Duke he 
was most willing to obey his orders, but that it was plain he 
could not with the animal on which he was mounted, and begged 
the favor of a good horse. William laughed heartily, took him 
into favor, and made him Abbot of St. Stephen, at Caen, where 
he established an academy. He accompanied William to Eng- 
land, and four years after the Conquest he was called to the See of 
Canterbury. It is reasonable to suppose that Lanfranc, who had 
done so much for Normandy, and whose literary fame was com- 
mensurate with Europe, established schools in England, and re- 
vived the love of letters ; for we are told that, by incessant labors, 
" he roused the rude minds of many to good, rubbed away the 
rust of viciousness, extirpated the seeds of evil, and planted those 
of virtue." Speaking of the monks of his own time, the historian 
of Malmesbury says: "Their minds are still formed on the model 
of Lanfranc ; his memory is dear to them ; a warm devotion to 
God, to strangers a pleasing affability, still remain ; nor shall 
ages see extinguished what in him was a benevolence of heart, 
comprising the human race, and felt by each one that approached 
him." 



Progress of Education. 17 

One of Lanfranc's admirers was Ingulphus, the Abbot of 
Croyland : he is remarkable as the first upon record who, 
having laid the foundation of his learning at Westminster, pro- 
ceeded for its further cultivation to Oxford. He was born of 
English parents, and a native of the city of London. "Whilst a 
school-boj at Westminster, he was so fortunate as to interest 
in his behalf Egitha, the daughter of Earl Godwin, and queen 
of Edward the Confessor — a young person of great beauty and 
learning, modest, and of a sweet disposition. " I have often seen 
her in my childhood," says the Abbot Ingulphus, " when I went 
to visit my father, who was employed in the King's palace. If 
she met me on my return from school, she interrogated me upon 
my grammar, poetry, or even logic, in which she was well versed; 
and when she had entangled me in the meshes of some subtle 
argument, she never failed to bestow upon me three or four 
crowns, by her servant, and to send me to have refreshment in 
the buttery." Egitha was mild and kind to all who approached 
her ; those who disliked the somewhat savage pride of her father 
and brother, praised her for not resembling them, as is poetically 
expressed in a Latin verse, then much esteemed: "Sicut spina 
rosam, genuit Godwinus Editham'' — "As the thorn produces the 
rose, Godwin produces Editha." 

" It is possible " (says the Rev. Mr. Tyler, in his Henry of 
Monmouth) " that many of our fair countrywomen, in the highest 
ranks now, are not aware that, more than 800 years ago, their 
fair and noble predecessors could play with a Westminster scholar 
in grammar, verses, and logic." Ingulphus tells how he made 
proficiency beyond many of his equals in mastering the doctrines 
of Aristotle, and covered himself to the very ankles in Cicero's 
Rhetoric ! 

In his History of the Abbey of Croyland, which he governed, 
he minutely describes its buildings, its various fortunes, posses- 
sions, and immunities, its treasures, its monks, its occupations, 
and its statutes. No distinct period seems to have been allotted 
to study ; though it is related that, on one occasion, a present of 
forty large original volumes of divers doctrines, and of more than 
one hundred smaller copies of books of various subjects, was 
made to the common library. Sometimes also the names are 
mentioned of men said to have been " deeply versed in every 
branch of literature." In the story of the abbot Turketul, we 
read that as the convent was rich, he relieved the indigent, so- 
laced the unhappy, and provided succor for all in distress. In 
the neighborhood, such children were educated as were designed 
for the monastic life. These the abbot visited once every day, 
watching, with parental solicitude, their progress in their several 
2 



18 School-Dai/s of Eminent Men. 

tasks ; rewarding their diligence with such little presents (which 
a servant carried with him) as children love ; and animating all 
by exhortation, or, when necessary, compelling them by chas- 
tisement, to the discharge of their duties. 

Of Croyland Abbey, standing upon the south border of Lin- 
colnshire, there remain considerable portions of its church, of 
Norman, Early English, and Perpendicular architecture ; and, as 
the lover of our national antiquities stands upon the adjoining 
triangular bridge of the 14th century (supposed to have been 
designed as a symbol of the Holy Trinity), he may reflect that 
within the hallowed convent walls dwelt some of the earliest 
promoters of education ; and as from these picturesque ruins 
over the neighboring fens the eye ranges, it may rest upon some 
nobly built churches, yet it would not unwillingly exchange the 
view of the monastic ruins for many an uninjured abiding home 
of the Reformed faith. 

WILLIAM II. HENRY I. STEPHEN. 

Of the education of William II., the third son, and the suc- 
cessor of the Conqueror, we have few details. He was born 
about 1060, and was placed by his father under Lanfranc, who 
superintended his education, and conferred on the prince the 
honor of knighthood, agreeably to the manners of the time. 

Henry L, born in 1068, at Selby, in Yorkshire, the only son 
of the Conqueror who was an Englishman by birth, was surnamed 
Beauclerc, or the scholar, having received a more literary educa- 
tion than was then usually given either to the sons of kings or 
to laymen of any rank : this advantage was seconded by natural 
abilities of a superior order ; and in his after-life, in the midst of 
his profligacy and unscrupulous ambition, Henry cherished a 
love of letters, and in his leisure was fond of the society of learned 
men. 

The early years of instruction Henry passed in liberal arts, and so thorouglily imbibed 
the sweets of learning, that no warlike commotions, no pressure of business, could ever 
erase them from his noble mind; although he neither read much openly, nor displaj'ed 
his attainments except sparingly. His learning, however, to speak the truth, though 
obtained by snatches, assisted him much in the science of governing; according to that 
saying of Plato, " Happy would be the commonwealth, if philosophers governed, or 
kings would be philosophers." Not slightly tinctured by philosophy, then, by degrees, 
in process of time, he learned how to restrain the people with lenity; nor did he ever 
suffer his soldiers to engage but where he saw a pressing emergency. In this manner, 
by learning, he trained his early years to the hope of the kingdom; and often in his 
father's hearing made use of the proverb, that ''An illiterate king is a crowned ass." 
They relate, too. that his father, observing his disposition, never omitted any means of 
cherishing his lively prudence; and that once when he had been ill-used by one of his 
brothers, and was in tears, he spirited him up, by saying, " Weep not, my boy; you too 
will be a king." — WiUiam of Malmesbury. 

Henry was sent by his father to the abbey of Abingdon, where 
he wfts initiated in the sciences under the care of the Abbot 



Progress of Education. 19 

Grymbald, and Farice, a physician of Oxford. Robert d'Oilly, 
constable of Oxford Castle, was ordered to pay for the board of 
the young prince in the convent, which the Conqueror himself 
frequently visited. Henry was also well educated in France : 
his talents were great, and under such a prince, pre-eminently 
entitled to be styled Bemiclerc, the arts of peace prospered ; the 
seminaries of learning were protected ; teachers abounded ; the 
convents furnished an undisturbed retreat to the studious ; and, 
in short, letters were generally patronized and cultivated. 

Stephen, born about 1096, was brought up at the court of his 
uncle, Henry I., and received many benefits from him. 

HENRY THE SECOND, HIS LOVE OF LETTERS SPORTS OF THE 

LONDON SCHOLARS. 

Henry IL, born at Mans, in Maine, in 1133, was brought to 
England in his tenth year, by his uncle, Robert Earl of Glou- 
cester, who being distinguished for his scholarship and love of 
letters, superintended the education of the young prince, while 
he remained for five years shut up for safety in the strong castle 
of Bristol. From his excellent uncle Henry imbibed a greater 
degree of literary culture than was then usual among princes : 
his faculties received a learned training, and to the end of his 
days he preserved an attachment to literature and to the conver- 
sation of scholars, and he drew around him many of the chief 
lights of the time. His reign has, however, according to a very 
common but incorrect mode of speaking, been called a Dark Age ; 
for an age cannot possibly be dark which had such men living in 
it as John of Salisbury, Peter of Blois, Thomas a Becket, and 
many others, especially historians, whose writings show the great 
extent of their reading and intellectual power. John was well 
acquainted with the Latin and Greek writers ; he had some 
knowledge of Hebrew ; he was skilled in the mathematics, nat- 
ural philosophy, theology, and morals ; he was an elegant orator 
and an eminent poet ; and he was amiable and cheerful, innocent 
and good. His letters are delightful reading : his style was best 
adapted to this species of composition, and his correspondents 
were among the first personages of the age. Peter of Blois was 
invited by Henry into England, became his secretary, and en- 
joyed high ecclesiastical dignities : his writings are chiefly theo- 
logical, but his letters are now alone read : like the letters of John of 
Salisbury they abound in quotations from Scripture, and from 
ecclesiastical and profane writers, but, Peter's own writing is en- 
cumbered by forced antitheses and a constant play upon words. 
Thomas a Becket was born in London, and educated at Oxford, 
but was sent to France, while young, to lose the English accent, 



20 School-Bays of Eminent Men. 

the hateful vulgarity of which would have rendered his associa- 
tion with respectable people impossible. He returned from his 
travels fully accomplished. Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury, 
made him his deacon, and the King made him his chancellor ; he 
was also intrusted with the education of the King's eldest son, 
and he subsequently became archbishop of Canterbury. 

From Fitzstephen's life-like description of London in this 
reign we obtain a picture of the hardy sports which then formed 
an important portion of the education of the people, as it did of 
the early Britons. To the north of the City were pasture-lands, 
with mill-streams ; and beyond was an immense forest, with 
dense thickets, where stags, fallow-deer, and wild bulls had their 
coverts ; and through this district the citizens, by the Charter of 
Henry I., had liberty to hunt. This great hunting-ground is now 
a surburb of the metropolis ; and as the Londoner strolls over the 
picturesque locality of " Hamstead Heath," he may encounter 
many an aged thorn — the lingering indications of a forest — and 
in the beautiful domain of Caen Wood, he may carry his mind's- 
eye back to these Anglo-Norman sports of seven centuries since. 
Hawking was also among their free recreations. Football was 
their favorite game ; the boys of the schools, and the various 
guilds of craftmen, having each their ball. In summer the 
youths exercised themselves in leaping, archery, wrestling, stone- 
throwing, slinging javelins, and fighting with bucklers. In win- 
ter, when "the great fen or moor" which washed the city walls 
on the north was frozen over, sliding, sledging, and skating were 
the sports of crowds, who had also their sham fights on the ice, 
which latter had their advantages; for, as Fitzstephen says, 
" Youth is an age eager for glory and desirous of victory, and so 
young men engage in counterfeit battles, that they may conduct 
themselves more valiantly in real ones." We are even told how 
the young Londoners, by placing the leg-bones of animals under 
their feet, and tying them around their ankles, by aid of an iron- 
shod pole, pushed themselves forward with great velocity alono- 
the ice of the frozen moor ; and one of these bone-shates, found 
in digging Moorfields, may now be seen in the British JMuseum. 

The Latinity of the writers during this reign was more pure 
than in many of the following ones. It has been presumed that 
the monks of these times were ignorant of classical learnino-, 
from Caxton speaking in one of his prefaces of Virgil's ^neis 
as a story then hardly known, and without any commendation of 
the poetry ; but it appears by Fitzstephen that in the schools of 
his time, the scholars daily torquent enthymemata, an expression 
which shows that he was well versed in Juvenal. John of Sal- 
isbury was as well versed and as ready in citing the Latin clas- 
sics as the men who have been most eminent for this knowledo-e 



Progress of Education. 21 

in modern times. The Saxons also seem to have made a dis- 
tinction between the Latin Avhieh was spoken by some of the 
clergy, and what was to be found in classical books. 

RISE OF ANGLO-NORMAN SCHOOLS. 

Schools and other seminaries of learning were zealously estab- 
lished in connection with the cathedrals and monasteries in all 
parts of the kingdom. In 1179 was ordered by the council of 
Lateran, that in every cathedral should be maintained a head 
teacher, or sJioIastic, as was the title given to him, who, besides 
keeping a school of his own, should have authority over all the 
other schoolmasters of the diocese, and the sole right of granting 
licences, without which no one would be entitled to teach ; and 
this office was filled in many cases by the most learned persons 
of the time. Besides the cathedral schools, there were others 
established in the religious houses ; and it is reckoned that of 
relio;ious houses of all kinds there were found no fewer than five 
hundred and fifty-seven, between the Conquest and the death of 
King John : and besides these there still existed many others 
that had been found in the Saxon times. All these schools, 
however, appear to have been intended exclusively for the in- 
struction of persons proposing to make the church their profes- 
sion ; but mention is made of others established in many of the 
principal cities, and even in villages, which would seem to have 
been open to the community at large ; for the laity, though gen- 
erally excluded from the benefits of learning, it is presumed were 
not left wholly without elementary education. 

Fitzstephen has left the following animated picture of the dis- 
putations of the schools of London at this period : 

On festival days, the masters assemble their pupils at those churches where the feast 
of the patron is soleranized, and there the scholars dispute, some in the demonstrative 
waj-, and others logically; some again write enthyraemes, whileothcrs use the most per- 
fect syllogism. Suuie, to show their abilities, engage in such disputation as is practiced 
among persons contending for victory alone; others dispute upon a truth, which is the 
grace of perfection. The sophisters, who argue upon feigned topics, are deemed clever 
according to their fluency of speech and command of language. Others endeavor to im- 
pose by false conclusions. Sometimes certain orators in their rhetorical harangues em- 
ploy ail the powers of persuasion, taking care to observe the precepts of the art. and to 
omit nothing opposite to the subject. The boys of the different schools wrangle with 
each other in verse, and contend about the principles of grammar, or the rules of the 
p-rfect and future tenses. Tliere are some who in epigrams, rhymes, and verses, use 
that trivial raillery i-o much practiced amongst the ancients, frequently attacking their 
companions with Fesceuine* license, but suppressing: the names, discharging their scotYs 
and sarcasms against them, touching with Socratic wit the feelings of their school-f How.--, 
or perhaps of greater personagoji, or biting them more irecly with a Theoniue-j- tcoth. 
The audience, 

Well disposed to laugh, 
With curling nose double the quivering peals. J 

* Fescennina carmina, (derived from Fescenina, a town of Etruria,) rude jesting dia- 
logue, in extempore verse, fuUof good-tempered raillery and coarse humor. — Madeaii's 
Notes on Horace. 

t From Iheon, a malignant wit, and a poor freedman of Rome, in Horace's time. 

+ The last line is imitated trom one of the ?^atircs of I'ersius: 

'•Ingeminant tremulos naso crispante cachinnos." — Sat. iii. v. 87. 



22 School-Bays of Eminent Men. 

The practice of school-training thus vividly described by Fitz- j 
Stephen in the twelfth century continued to the end of the 
sixteenth. 

RICHARD I., THE POET KING. 

Richard I., third son of Henry II, born at Oxford in 1157, 
lived much in the court of the princes of Provence, learned their 
language, and practiced their poetry, then called the gaye 
science, and the standard politeness of that age ; it is recorded of 
him, that " he could skillfully make poetry on the eye of fair 
ladies." 

A new era of Anglo-Norman literature opens with the reign of Richard I. The lion- 
hearted king prided himself on his poetic talents; and he wai the patron of jongleurs 
and trouveres, who were not properly minstrels; they did not recite their own works, but 
committed them to writing, which is the cause of their being preserved in early manu- 
ficripts. They were monks, and some of them appear to have embraced the monastic 
life after having been professed poets, and to have made atonements for the profane pro- 
ductions of their earlier years, by dedicating their talents to sacred subjects. — WrighVs 
Biographia Britannica Literaria. 

Richard, the earliest recorded writer of French verse — although 
nothing of his poetry remains except the fame, preserved in the 
writing of another Trouvere of the next age — was sent by his 
father to be educated at Bayeux ; and his taste for poetry is said 
to have been first awakened by the songs of the land of his an- 
cestors. According to Ritson, Richard is never known to have 
uttered a single English word, unless when he said of the King 
of Cyprus, " dole, this is a fole Breton." Many great nobles 
of this century were utterly ignorant of the English language : 
even Longchamp, Bishop of Ely, chancellor and prime minister 
to Richard I., according to a contemporary letter, did not know a 
word of English. 

CHURCH SCHOOLS. BENEFIT OF CLERGY. 

At the close of Richard's reign, about the year 1198, there was 
founded at Bury St. Edmund's a school for forty poor boys, by 
Sampson, Abbot of St. Edmund's, a man of great force of char- 
acter, who had risen from the people to wear a miter and be a 
Peer of Parliament ; and in his greatness he did not forget his 
lowly origin, for he is recorded to have said to one suing him for 
a benefice, " Thy father was master of the schools, and at the time 
when I was a poor clerk, he granted me freely and in charity an 
entrance to his school and the means of learning ; now I, for the 
sake of God, do grant to thee what thou dost ask." 

The same good work which Abbot Sampson accomplished at 
Bury was being accomplished throughout the land for several 
centuries before him, and several centuries after him, so that 
knowledge became the special inheritance, not of the high-born 



Progress of Education. 23 

and the rich, but of those of low estate. It is true that for the 
most part those who were educated in the chantries and schools 
attached to cathedrals and monasteries were the recruits whom 
the Church was preparing for her militant service. But they 
were taken from the people, and they lived amongst the people, 
keeping alive in the hearts of the community the humanizing 
influences of letters and of religion. Few of the laity, rich or 
poor, could read ; but the poor saw their children winning the 
rewards of learning without favor or affection ; and the light of 
truth, though mingled with error, spread from the altar to the 
meanest hovel, and kept our fathers from barbarism. The old 
law called Benefit of Clergy shows how gradually the ability to 
read extended to the clergy. In the early times clergymen 
claimed the privilege of being exempt in certain cases from 
criminal punishment by secular judges. They appeared in cler- 
ical habit, and claimed the privilegium clericale. At length, the 
ability to read was considered sufficient to establish the privilege, 
and all offenders who claimed their " clergy " had to read a pas- 
sage from the Psalms, which came to be humorously called " the 
neck verse." This was no merely theoretical privilege, for the 
ability to read, absurd as it may appear, saved an offender in the 
first instance from the full penalty of his crime. In the Pasto)i 
Letters it is recorded that in 1464, Thomas Gurney employed 
his man to slay " my Lord of Norwich's cousin." They were 
both tried and convicted of the crime. Thomas Gurney pleaded 
his clergy, and was admitted to mercy as "" clerk convict ;" the 
less guilty servant, being unable to read, was hanged. But the 
rank of Thomas Gurney gave no assurance that he possessed 
any knowledge of letters. 

RISE OF UNIVERSITIES. 

The twelfth century was the age of the institution of what we 
now call Universities in Europe, which had, however, long before 
existed as schools, or studia. Oxford and Cambridge had un- 
doubtedly been seats of learning long before this time ; but there 
is no evidence that either had at an earlier date become anything 
more than a great school, or held any assigned rank or privilege 
above the other great schools of the kingdom. 

Since the Conquest, Oxford, ill treated by William, and disre- 
garded by his son Rufus, under Beauclerc again became the object 
of royal favor, and numbers flocked to her academic groves. The 
predilection of Beauclerc for the muses made him partial to the 
neighborhood ; and he granted some privileges to the place. 
In his time, Robert Pulleyn, who had studied in Paris, gave 
lectures in theology at Oxford ; and by his exertions the love 



2i Scliool'Days of Eminent 3fen. 

of science was greatly revivecl, and the number of students in- 
creased. Here the study of the civil law began at this period. 
Oxford continued, throughout the reign of Henry II., to follow 
the line of studies which the fashion of the age recommended ; 
and her pupils were second to none in fortune and fame. Thomas 
a Becket, who had studied at Bologna, disdained not to receive 
academical honors at Oxford, as honors were then conferred ; 
and after his promotion to the highest dignities in church and 
state, he attested, on all occasions, his kind remembrance of the 
favors which he had received. Richard I., who was born at 
Oxford, is stated to have patronized and fostered the University. 
To this statement, however, Berington demurs, and asks : " Be- 
cause Richard's father often resided at Woodstock, and some- 
times visited the monks at Abingdon, can it be thought that 
the love of letters attracted him to the spot, as on grounds not 
more substantial it is said of Beauclerc, who was probably 
impelled by the joys of the chase to the woods of Cumner and 
Bagley?" - 

Cambridge, which, from the ravages of the Danes, and the" 
insults of the first Normans, had long lain in obscurity and neg- 
lect, revived about the year 1109, when Joffrid, Abbot of Croy- 
land, intending to rebuild his monastery, which had been lately 
destroyed by fire, sent Master Gislebert, with three other monks, 
to his manor of Cottenham, whence they went every day to 
Cambridge, where, having hired a bam, they gave public lec- 
tures, and soon collected a great concourse of scholars ; for in 
the second year after their arrival, the number of their scholars 
from the town and country increased so much that there was no 
house, barn, nor church capable of containing them. They ac- 
cordingly dispersed over different quarters of the town : brother 
Odo read grammar early in the morning, to the boys and younger 
students ; at one o'clock, brother Terricus read Aristotle's Logic 
to the elder class ; at three, brother William gave lectures on 
Tully's Rhetoric and Quintilian's Institution ; while Master Gisle- 
bert, not understanding English, but very ready in the Latin and 
French languages, preached in the several churches to the people 
on Sundays and holidays. " Thus, from this small source, which 
has swollen into a great river, we now behold the city of God 
made glad, and all England rendered fruitful by many teachers 
and doctors issuing from Cambridge as from a most holy para- 
dise." But a few years after this was written, during the war 
between King John and his barons, this paradise was entered 
and plundered by both parties. 

Antony a Wood has preserved a few Latin verses by an 
English student at Paris, written in 1170, which well describe 



Progress of Education. 25 

the spirit of display and love of expense for which his country- 
men were already noted. The translation is as follows : 

Of noble manners, gracious look and speech, 
Strong sense, with genius brightened, shines in each. 
Their free hand still rains largess; when they dine, 
Course follows course, in rivers flows the wine. 

The erection of Colleges in the Universities for the residence 
of their members, as separate communities, may be dated from 
about the middle of the thirteenth century. 

University College is iho. foundation of King Alfred; but the 
present building is not of a date earlier than Charles I. The 
right of the crown to the visitation of the college rests, however, 
on the ground that it is a royal foundation through Alfred ; a 
claim which was preferred in favor of the royal prerogative 
in the Court of King's Bench, so lately as the year 1726. 
The University of Oxford is not much indebted to the kings 
of England for their munificence and benefations, if we except 
Alfred. 

From the Roll of the Household Expenses of Swinfield, Bishop of Hereford, in 1289, 
we find that the expenses of two students who were maintained by the Bishop at the 
University of Oxford, and their incidental charges, amounted to half a mark a week — 
a considerable sum, if valued by the comparative value of money in these times. " Six 
shillings and eightpence weekly for two scholars was a sum probably not far short of 
three hundred pounds a year of our own times. It is pleasant to know, from this 
record, that the great men of those days had an affectionate regard for youths of prom- 
ise, and by giving them, the best education opened their way to positions of public use- 
fulness." — Knight's Popular History of England. 

TROUBLED REIGN OF KING JOHN. 

John, the youngest son of Henry II., was born at Oxford in 
1166 ; but ot his education we have no record of interest. 

John has had no historian ; so that we possess but little in- 
formation of his personal character. He appears to have shown 
little taste for letters or for any other refined pursuits. But, 
however hated by other classes, John seems to have been attached 
to, and a personal favorite with, the seafaring people, much of 
his time in each year being ordinarily spent on the coast, as ap- 
pears from the Close and Patent Rolls : hence, probably, arose 
the story by Matthew Paris, now known to be incorrect, that 
John, immediately after the granting of Magna Charta, retired 
to the Isle of Wight, and there passed his time in familiar asso- 
ciation with mariners and fishermen. 

Under this troubled reign, Latin poetry flourished most : it 
became extremely popular, and continued to exist in its original 
vigor long after the style of the most serious Latin poets be- 
came hopelessly debased. Very little Latin prose that is toler- 
able, was written after the middle of the thirteenth century. 



26 School-Days of Eminent Men. 



HENRY III. SETTLEMENT OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 

Henry III., surnamed of Winchester, from the place of his 
birth, was the eldest son of King John, and was born in 1206 : 
he succeeded to the throne in his tenth year, his education being, 
in all probability, superintended by his guardian, William, Earl 
of Pembroke, who acted as Protector of the Kingdom. 

With the thirteenth century, the English language began to 
be cultivated ; and about the commencement of the fourteenth 
century, our language had undergone the great change through 
the introduction of Norman words. Many French and Latin 
words have, indeed, been introduced in later ages, but by learn- 
ing or caprice, rather than by the convenience of familiar inter- 
course. 

An able critic in the North British Revieic thus describes this 
important epoch in the literature of our country : 

An immense distance continued to exist between the Normans and tlae English people 
even so late as the early part of the fourteenth century. A Poitevin, who was prime 
minister in the time of Henry III., bein^asked to observe the great charter and the laws of 
the land, answered — ''I am no Englishman that I should know thes-e charters and these 
laws." Robert Grosse-tete. bishop of Lincoln, principal chaplain to the armj' of the bar- 
ons, then reckoned only two languages in England, Latin for men of letters, and French for 
the uneducated, in which language he himself in his old age wrote pious books for the use 
of the laity, making no account tif the English language, or of those who spoke it. The 
poets, even those of English birth, composed their verses in French; but there was a 
class of ballad-makers and romance-writers who employed either pure Saxon, which 
was now revived, or a dialect mixed up of Saxon and French, which served for the 
habitual communication between the higher and lower classes. This was the origin of 
our present language, which arose out of the necessities of society. In order to be 
understood by th« people, the Normans Saxonized their speech as well as they cmild; 
and on the other hand, in order to be understood by the upper classes, the people Nor- 
manized theirs This intermediate idiom first became current in the cities, where the 
population of the two races had become more intermingled, and where the inequality of 
conditions was less marked than in the rural districts.* 

About the middle of the fourteenth century, a great many poetical and imaginative 
■Works appeared in this new language. At length, the French language was entirely 
laid aside, not only in the courts of justice but also in the high court of Parliament, as 
■well as by all the writers who addressed themselves to the middle classes and the lower 
populations. We still indeed retain a venerable relic of the old Norman, in the custom 
of giving the royal assent in that language: the formula is — Le Roy le veult — le Roy 
s-avisera — not even, we believe, modernizing the orthography. 

ROGER BACON, AN EDUCATIONAL REFORMER. 

At this early period (about the middle of the thirteenth cen- 
tury), there appeared a sagacious advocate of reform in education, 
reading, and reasoning, in Roger Bacon, who was born at Ilch es- 
ter, in Somersetshire, near the year 1214. Till nearly the mid- 
dle of the last century, the vulgar notion of him was that of 
the learned monk searching for the philosopher's stone in his 
laboratory, aided only by infernal spirits. He was accused of 
practicing witchcraft, thrown into prison, and nearly starved ; 
and, according to some, he stood a chance of being burned as 

*This differs from the view taken by another able writer, quoted at pp. 12-14. 



Progress of Education. 27 

a magician. He was educated at Oxford, and next proceeded 
to Paris, then the first university in the world. Returning to 
Oxford, he appHed himself closely to the study of languages and 
experimental philosophy ; but the lectures which he gave in the 
University were soon prohibited, and he was accused of magic, 
a charge then frequently brought against those who studied the 
sciences, and particularly chemistry. The following detached 
passages of his Opus Majus no doubt contains opinions which 
its author was m the habit of expressing : 

Most students have do worthy exercise for their heads, and therefore languish and 
stupefy upon bad translations, which lose them both time and money. Appearmces 
alone rule them, and they care not what they know, but what they are thought to 
know by a senseless multitude. There are four principal stumbling blocks in the way 
of arriving at knowledge— authority, habit, appearances as they present themselves to 
the vulgar eye, and concealment of ignorance combined with ostentation of knowledge. 
Even if the tirst three could be got over by some great effort of reason, the fourth re- 
mains ready. — Men presume to teach before they have learnt, and fall into so many 
errors, that the idle think themselves happy in comparison — and hence, botli in science 
and in common life, we see a thousand falsehoods for one truth. — .\ud this being the 
case, we must not stick to what we heard read, but must examine most strictly the 
opinions of our ancestors, that we may add what is lacking, and correct what is erro- 
neous, but with all modesty and allowance.— We must, with all our strength, prefer 
reason to custom, and the opinions of the wise and good to the perceptions of the 
vulgar; and we must not use the triple argument: that is to say, this has been laid 
down, this has been usual, this has been common, therefore it is to be held by. For 
the very opposite conclusion does much better follow than the premises. And though 
the whole world be possessed by the causes of error, let us freely bear opinions contrary 
to established usage. 

The Opus Majus begins with a book on the necessity of ad- 
vancing knowledge, and a dissertation on the use of philosophy 
in theology. It is followed by books on the utility of grammar 
and mathematics ;* in the latter of which the author runs through 
the various sciences of astronomy, chronology, geography, and 
music. Bacon was also long reputed to have been acquainted 
with gunpowder and the telescope ; but the former is proved to 
have been known centuries before his time ; and though he dis- 
covered optic lenses, he was not acquainted with the principle of 
the telescope. 

EDWARD II. SCHOLARS IN HIS REIGN. 

Edward II., the eldest surviving son of Edward I., born at 
Carnarvon, in 1284, at the age of seven years lost his excellent 
mother, Eleanor of Castile, who would probably have guided his 
education better than his less stern father. He was of a kindly 
nature, of impulsive character and passionate will, though not 
wanting in courage ; for at seventeen he led a battalion against 
the Scots. 

* Bacon said of those who applied themselves to the study of mathematics in his 
time, most stopped at the fifth proposition of Euclid. Hence this prop.,sition used to 
be called the Pons Assininus, or Asinorum, or Asses' Bridge, a name by which it is still 
known. 



28 School-Days of Eminent Men, 

Among the most distinguished names in literature and science 
that belong to the reign of Edward I., is Duns Scotus, a Fran- 
ciscan friar, educated in a convent of that Order at Newcastle. 
He became a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, and professor of 
theology in the University, his great fame causing incredible 
numbers to attend his lectures. Although he died at the early 
age of forty-three, " he wrote so many books that one man is 
hardly able to read them." In his day he was accounted " the 
Subtle Doctor ;" but his learning was only in the Divinity of 
Schoolmen, far removed from the sound and useful learning which 
enables the scholar to discover the truth, and to impart the knowl- 
edge of it to others. Scotus having dared to controvert some 
positions of Thomas Aquinas, who was deemed the oracle of the 
Schools, he became the founder of a new sect in philosopy, and re- 
vived, with inextinguishable ardor, the old disputes between the 
Bealists and the Nominalists. The Greeks and Persians, it has 
been observed, never fought against each other with more fury 
and rancor than these two discordant sects. Oxford was a grand 
theater of their contests. Though much poetry now began to be 
written, the name of only one English poet has descended to 
posterity : Adam Davy or Davie, the author of various poems of 
a religious cast, which have never been printed. There is still 
extant a curious Latin poem on the battle of Bannockburn, 
written in rhyming hexameters, by Robert Baston, a Carmelite 
friar, whom Edward carried along with him to celebrate his 
anticipated victory; but who being taken prisoner, was com- 
pelled by the Scotch to sing the defeat of his countrymen in 
this jingling effusion. Bale speaks of this Baston as a writer of 
tragedies and comedies, some English ; but none of them are 
now known to exist. 

EDWARD III. HIS ACCOMPLISHMENTS. 

Edward III., the eldest son of Edward II., was born at Wind- 
sor in 1312. Joshua Barnes, in his Life of this renowned king, 
a closely-printed folio volume of 900 pages, gives the following 
" small taste " of his character : 

From his Birth he was cartfally bred up to all things that seemed necessary or proper 
for Princes to excel in; so that, through the Vigor of his Parts, being rendered very apt 
to imbibe tlie best Principle-^, he made a speedy and extraordinary improvement in all 
Noble Qualities -jfor he was of a very |)iercing Judgment, Sweet Nature and (ioud Disce- 
tion, and considering tlie many weight}' affairs that employed his whole Life, not only 
kind to the Muses, but much befriended by them, as appears by those Learned Writings 
of which Pi'sons says he was the Author. When he was capable of receiving more in- 
genious Educ'tion, a Man of Great Reading, Erudition and Honor, was provided from 
Oxford to be his Tutor, who though commonly called Richard Biinj* from the place of his 
Birth, was indeed Son to one S. Richard Anngervile, Kniglit, but was afterward by this 
his Royal Pupil, made Privy Seal and Treasurer of England, tli*n Dean of Wells, Lord 
Chancellor of England and Bishop of Durham. 

* From a passage in Richard of Bury it might be inferred that about 1343, none but 
eccleaiastics could read at all. He deprecates the puttiug of books into the hands of 



Progress of Education, 29 

Edward was proclaimed king when in his fifteenth year, and 
in a few months marched at the head of a large army against the 
Scotch ; so that his boyhood presented few opportunities for his 
intellectual culture ; but the glories of his reign of fifty years 
gave "a more vigorous activity to the faculties of England." 
This was the golden age of chivalry, of architecture, and of cos- 
tume ; and in literature the age of Chaucer — his tales being read 
alike in the baronial hall and the student's chamber. The uni- 
versities were filled with scholars. From the Anglo-Norman 
had finally been involved that noble tongue upon which our lit- 
erature has been built, though many books perfectly intelligible 
to us were written before this reign. In 1307, Sir John Man- 
deville wrote a narrative of his Travels in English, as well as 
in French and Latin ; and WicklifFe, the great Reformer, deliv- 
ered his earliest appeals to the people on questions of religion 



in English. 



SCHOOLS IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER. 



Chaucer, traditionally born in 1328, of a wealthy and respect- 
able family, received the education of a gentleman ; he is believed 
to have studied both at Cambridge and Oxford ; he was well ac- 
quainted with divinity and philosophy, and the scholastic learning 
of his age, and displays in numerous passages an intimate knowl- 
edge of astronomy, and most of the sciences as far as they w^ere 
then known or cultivated. " Chaucer's language," says Mr. Bell, 
" is that of the good society in v/hich he lived, and into which a 
large accession of Norman blood, usages, and idioms, had been 
infused."* Heretofore, Norman-French had been the languao^e 
of education, of the court, and of legal documents ; and when the 
Normanized Anglo-Saxon was employed by literary men, it was 
for the special purpose, as they were usually very careful to men- 
tion, of conveying instruction to the common people. But now 
the distinction between the conquering Normans and subjected 
Anglo-Saxons was nearly lost in a new and fraternal national 
feeling, which recognized the country under the name of Eng- 
land^ and the people and language under the simple appellation 
of English. Scriveners at this time were chiefly employed in 
copying books. Chaucer thus addresses his scrivener : 

Adam Scrivener, yf ever it the befalle 
Boice or Troiles for to write newe, 
Under thy long locks thou mayst have the scalle, 

laid (laymen), who do not know one side from another; and in several place', it seems 
that he thought books were meant for the " tonsured alone." But a great change took 
place in the ensuing half century; and he can be scarcely construed strictly even as to 
his own time. 

* Annotated Edition of the English Poets: Life of Chaucer. 



30 School-Days of Eminent Men. 

But after my making thou write more true; 

So after a day I more thy werke renewe, 
It to correcte, and eke to rubbe and scrape, 
And al is thorow thy negUgence and rape. ^. 

Such was the affectation for speaking French in this reign^ 
that it became a proverb — "Jack would be a gentleman, if he 
could speak French." It was, however, often very corrupt, in 
allusion to which Chaucer says in the Prologue to the Prioress's 
Tale: 

" And French she spak ful fayre and fety saly 
After the schoole of Stratford at the Bow, 
For French of Paris was to her unknowe." 

It was, nevertheless, so necessary, that Robert of Eglesfield, who 
founded Queen's College in Oxford, directed by his statutes that 
the scholars should speak either French or Latin. 

Female education at this period consisted in needle-work (espe- 
cially) and reading. Boccacio describes a wife as " young and 
beautiful in her person ; mistress of her needle ; no man-servant 
waiting better at her master's table ; skilled in horsemanship and 
the management of a hawk ; no merchant better versed in ac- 
counts." Chaucer mentions reading and singing as the education 
of little children. 

SCHOLARSHIP OF EDWARD THE BLACK PRINCE. 

Edward the Black Prince, the eldest son of Edward III., was 
born at Woodstock in 1330 : ^ 

Nursed at the bosom of his mother (Queen Phillippa), he he received health and" ' 
strength from the same pure blood that had given him existence: the gentle impress of 
her own sweet mind fixed upon her child, dur ng his early education, those kindly vir- 
tues which tempered in his nature the fierceness of his father's courage. Never, per- 
haps, in the world's -history, do we find so strong an example of the qualities possessed 
by both parents being blended in the child, as in the case of the Black Prince, in whose 
heart the generous and feeling nature of Phillippa elevated rather than depressed the 
indomitable valor and keen sagacity of Edward III. — James's Life of the Black Prince. 

Holinshed tells us that Phillippa herself selected for the Prince's 
tutor a person of whose talents and virtues she had possessed the 
opportunity of judging ; this was Doctor "Walter Burleigh, a well- 
known scholar of Merton College, Oxford, who had been ap- 
pointed almoner to the Queen, and had remained from that time 
attached to her household. Simon Burleigh, " a near kinsman of 
the Doctor's (says Barnes), was admitted, with other young gen- 
tlemen, to be school-fellows with this noble Prince." Before the 
Prince was seven years of age he was girded by his father with 
a sword, and saluted the first English Duke ; and immediately, in- 
exercise of his new dignity, he dubbed twenty knights. In his 
thirteenth year he entered upon the chivalrous training of the time, 
which, by inuring the body to fatigue, and the limbs to the contin- 



Progress of Education. El 

nal use of arms, gave skill and great power of endurance to his ac- 
tive and robust figure. In 1343, he was created Prince of Wales, 
upon which the knightly feast of the Round Table was appointed 
to be held in an ample theater near Windsor Castle ; at the age 
of sixteen, the Black Prince led an army to the field of battle, 
and in a few years grew to be " the flower of all chivalry in the 
world." 

WINCHESTER COLLEGE FOUNDED BY VTILLIAM OF WYKEHAM. 

In the reign of Edward III. lived the celebrated William of 
Wykeham, who was born at the village of Wykeham, in Hamp- 
shire, in 1324. By the liberality of Sir Nicholas Uvedale, gov- 
ernor of Winchester Castle, the boy Wykeham was sent to " the 
Great Grammar-school in Winchester," originally an institution 
for education founded before the Conquest. Uvedale next pre- 
sented Wykeham to Edward HI. for his skill in architecture. In 
the short ^pace of four years he was promoted through civil and 
ecclesiastical grades, to be Bishop of Winchester and Lord High 
Chancellor of these realms. He had already commenced the 
building of New College at Oxford ; and in the following year, 
with the view of taking the early education of youth out of the 
hands of the monks, " it was his admirable thought to raise a 
nursery school preparatory to his cooperating with a higher 
course in his college ; and thus to raise the standard of education 
in the country, to that stamp and character which has ever since 
(through his institution and the copies which were drawn from 
it) distinguished the English gentlemen amongst the families of 
Europe."* Thus arose Winchester College, the scholars of 
which are designated to this day Wykehamists. The novelty 
and merit of the plan were imitated by Chicheley, at All Souls, 
Oxford ; Henry VI. at Cambridge ; and Waynflete at Magdalene. 
"Twenty years before his hives wer^ built (1373), Wykeham 
had gathered his swarming bees under temporary roofs, with 
masters and statutes : which with parental solicitude he watched, 
altered, and amended from time to time, by his daily experience. 
So long before his colleges were built was his institution effect- 
ive." Wykeham died in 1404, at the age of eighty years, with 
the respect and admiration and gratitude of all ; and like the spirit 
which he had ever sought throughout his amiable life, " length 
of days w^ere in his right hand, and in his left riches and honor." 
He is buried in Winchester Cathedral : " beneath the spot where 
the school-boy prayed, the honored prelate sleeps." — Walcott, 

* C. R. Cockerell, R.A. — Chichelej' was a Wykehamist; as was apparently Waynflete, 
who certainly was master of Wykeham's school in 1429. 



32 School-Days of Eminent 3Ien. 

"Wykeham's College buildings stand immediately adjoining the 
main street of Winchester, a city of kindred quiet. The Middle 
Gate Tower has under three canopied niches, the Angelic Salu- 
tation, and the Founder in prayer. The gateway leads to a truly 
noble quadrangle of Wykeham's architecture. On the left side 
is the dining-hall, with an oaken roof finely carved ■with the busts 
of kings and prelates ; and in the center is a louver, through which 
the smoke ascended in olden times, when the scholars gathered 
round the hearth to sing and listen to the tales of the chroniclers. 
Here also plays were acted in the days of the Tudors'; the boy- 
bishop custom was observed as at Eton ; and monarchs, prelates, 
and nobles have been feasted. On the south side of the quad- 
rangle is the chapel, with an oaken roof of fan tracery ; the large 
window, forty feet in height, is filled with painted glass, as are 
also the side windows. Next are the cloisters, surrounding an 
area, in the centre of which is the former chapel, now the library. 
Beyond is the Public School; it was built in 1G87, chiefly by 
subscription among the Wykehamists, and is the noblest struc- 
ture of the kind in the kingdom. Upon the walls are inscribed 
in Latin the admonitions and rules for the government of the 
scholars ; on the west wall are painted upon a large tablet, a 
miter and crozier, the rewards of clerical learning ; a pen and 
inkhorn and a sword, the ensigns of the civil and military pro- 
fessions ; and a Winton rod, the dullard's quickener ; beneath 
each symbol is its apt legend : " Aut disce," " Aut discede," 
" Manet sors tertia ca^di." — " Either learn :" " or depart ;" " or in 
the third place be flogged ;" underneath is the flogging-place. On 
the east wall is a corresponding tablet, bearing the School laws, 
in Latin. The Chamber walls are carved with the names of 
many an illustrious Wykehamist ; but, the most interesting memo- 
rial is the Seventh Chamber and the adjoining passage. This 
" was the ancient school wherein Waynflete taught, and was called 
by the founder, ^ Magna ilia domits :^ the stone * books' in the 
embayed windows still remain ; it could accommodate scarcely 
more than ninety boys." At present, the foundation scholars at 
Winchester are limited to 70 ; and the commoners are in general 
about 130. The College and its Grammar School differ little 
in management from Eton. Among its characteristic customs is 
the chanting of the Latin song '•" Dulce Domum," to which jus- 
tice cannot be done in anv Ensrlish translation. It is sunsr in 
College Hall on the six last Saturdays of the "long half" before 
" evening bells ;" and at the July festival : 

Nations, and thrones, and reverend law^s, have melted like a dream, 
Yet Wykeliam's ■works are green and fresh beside the crystal stream; 
Four hundred years and fifty their rolling: course have sped, 
Since the first surge-clad scholar to Wykeham's feet was led: 



Progress of Education. 33 

And still his seventy faithful bovs, in these presumptuous days 
Learn the old truth, speak the old words, tread in the ancient ways- 
Mill for their daily orisons resounds the matin chime— ' 

Still linked in bands of brotherhood, St. Catherine's steep they climb' 
Sti to their Sabbath worship they troop by Wykeham's tomb— 
Still in the summer twilight sing their sweet song of home. 

Roundell Palmer's Anniversary Ballad. 

Another eminent Wykehamist, the Rev. Mackenzie Walcott 
M.A., has commemorated in his Williatn of Wyheham and hh 
Colleges, the glories of Winchester, with an earnest eloquence 
and affection for this school of near five centuries, which accom- 
panies the reader through every page of Mr. Walcott's volume 
It is dehghtful to see with what pride the author contemplates 

l'\!'^VT^^ %Kl '^''''''^' ""^'^^ ^'^ "' ^^'""«^* ^^y^ produced Chicheley and Waynflete 
the founders of the two grandest colleges in our ancient universities; the gentle Warham 
SariT.'.tb! reviver of the Greek language; the philosophic Shaftesbury and profound 
Harris; the moralist, Browne; among poets-some of them distinguishedornaments of the 
Augustan age-Otway, Young, Collins, Somerville, Phillips, CrSwe; the leaS BHsor, 
Burgess, Lowth, and meek Ken; the graceful Wottok; araong'judges' Erie and Cranwor?h ■ 
a^ong speakers, Onslow Cornwall, Sidmouth, and Lefeyrl;^nfong seamen KeaTsani 
Warren; among soldiers. Lord Guildford, Seaton, Dalliac, Myers and their ^; 11 w.^ 
panlons in the hard-fought fields of the kst war. ' . ' S'has ne v^ff £° '' 

tributing its share of faithful men to serve the couniry in 6hurch and S at^ it ha" ^11 
sustained the reputation which should attach to the only ancient institution not founded 
\IZ rrS Cotit '""'^ '''''' *^ '^ ^ ^"^^^ college."-P./ac. to WHlia:::)^^^^ 

WICKLIFFE TRANSLATES THE BIBLE. 

As Chaucer was the Morning Star of our poetry in the rei-n 
of Edward III., so Wickliffe, who first translated the Scriptures 
into Enghsh, has been called the Morning Star of the Reforma- 
tion ; whilst his works being written in English, and di^per«ed 
among the people, greatly contributed to the progress of the 
English tongue. John Wickliffe was born in 1324, in a little 
village in Yorkshire, was educated at Oxford, and was one of the 
students who attended the lectures of the pious Bradwardine at 
Merton College.* At that time he was in the flower of his a-e 
and produced a great sensation in the university. He was elect'ed 
m 1364 warden of Balliol, and in 1365 warden of Canterbury 
College also. His biblical and philosophical studies, his knowl- 
edge of theology, and his penetrating mind, were extraordinary. 
We have only space to speak of his translation of the Scriptures 
the work of his latter years : "' 

+i,!fp^?^i"l'^ ^^\ ^a^i^lied the Scriptures into a mysterious obscurity It is true 
iad t?an!l«f.V.'rf ^"'^ *^' ^r"^'^ °^^t- J"^°; ^^'^^ thi learned men at Alfred's com' 
some bookfof the' Om't.T^''"? V?f ^'''l' \" '^^ ^^'=^° «^ ^thelred had translated 

S:S"f"b"^^^^ 

clerks m the fourt eenth century , had produced a version of the Psalms, the Gos^elsf and 

* Bradwardine was also one of the greatest geniuses of his time, and occupies the fir«t 
rank among astronomers philosophers, and mathematicians. His Arithme L and Ge 
iyelThisTdvX'e'"^ ^'' '^' "^ ^" °^' ^""^ '' ""'' Astronomical TaTle^ha^^ en: 

3 



84 School-Bays of Eminent Men. 

the Epistles: but these rare volumes were hidden, like theological curiositiea, in the 

libraries of a few convents The time appeared ripe for the publication of a 

Bible. The increase of population, the attention tlie English were beginning to devote 
to their own language, the development which the representative system of government 
had received, the awakening of the human mind— all these circumstances favored the 
Reformer's design, 

WicklilTe was ignorant indeed of Greek and Hebrew; but was it nothing to shake off 
the dust which for ages had covered the Latin Bible, and translate it into English ? He 
■was a good Latin scholar, of sound understanding and great penetration; but above al', 
he loved the Bible, he understood it, and desired to communicate this treasure to others. 
Let us imagine him in his quiet study: On his table is the Vulgate text corrected after 
the best manuscripts; and, lying open around him are the commentaries of the doctors 
of tbe Church, es> ecially those of St. Jerome and Nicholas Syrensis. Between ten and 
fifteen years he steadily prosecuted his task; learned men aided him with their advice, 
and one of them, Nicholas Hereford, appears to hnve translated a few chapters for him. 
At last in 1S80, it was completed.— D'^uSi^ne'^ History of the Reformation. 

The translation being finished, the labor of the copyists began, 
and the Bible was ere long widely circulated either wholly or in 
portions. It was welcomed by citizens, soldiers, and the lower 
classes ; the high-born curiously examined the unknown book ; 
and even Anne of Luxemburg, wife of Richard II., having learnt 
English, began to read the Gospels. She did more than this ; 
she made them known to Arundel, Archbishop of York, Chan- 
cellor, who, struck at the sight of a foreign lady--of a queen, 
humbly devoting her leisure to the study of such a virtuous book, 
commenced reading them himself, and rebuked the prelates who 
neglected this holy pursuit. " You could not meet two persons 
on the highway," says a cotemporary writer, " but one of them 
was Wickliflfe's disciple." Yet, all in England did not equally re- 
joice : the lower clergy opposed the enthusiasm. The Reformer 
was violently attacked, yet the clamors did not alarm him ; he 
did not stand alone : in the palace, as in the cottage, and even in 
parliament, the rights of the Holy Scriptures found defenders. 
A motion having been made in the Upper House (1390) to 
seize all the copies of the Bible, the Duke of Lancaster (who 
had been Wickliffe's firm friend throughout the great work, and 
was the friend of Chaucer and of Gower) exclaimed : "Are we 
then the very dregs of humanity, that we cannot possess the 
laws of our religion in our own tongue ?" The texts of the Bi- 
ble were now in every mouth, as they were re-echoed in the 
sermons of preachers, in churches, and open places. The poor 
treasured up the words of comfort for all earthly afilictions. The 
rich and great meditated upon the inspired sentences which so 
clearly pointed out a more certain road to salvation than could 
be found through indulgences and pilgrimages. Wickliffe died 
in peace, in his rectory at Lutterworth, in 1384, but the effect of 
his preaching still lives. In the vestry of Lutterworth church 
they show to this day the chair in which sat " the great English 
Reformer." 



Progress of Education, 35 



EDUCATION OF RICHARD II. HIS PATRONAGE OF GOWER. 

This distinction of literature extended through the reign of 
Edward's successor, Eichard, the son of Edward the Black Prince, 
born at Bordeaux, in 1366, and who succeeded to the throne when 
only in his twelfth year. His government and education were 
committed to Simon Burleigh, a school-fellow of the Black Prince, 
•who had by him been made Knight of the Garter. 

In a manuscript of the year 1385, we read that English began 
to be the language into which school-boys construed their lessons 
in the reign of Richard the Second ; as in the following extract : 

" oon is (sc. reason) for children in scholes agenst the usage and manner of all other 
nations, beeth compelled for to leave hire own language, and for to construe hire lessons, 
and here things in Frenche, and so they haveth sethe Normans come first into Eng- 
londe; also gentilmen children beeth taught to S| eke P'rensche, from the time that they 
beeth rockked in here cradel. . . . And uplondichemen will likne hym.self togentyl- 
men, and sondeth with gret besynesse for to speak Frenshe for to be told of." 

One of the bright lights of this reign, Gower, was patronized 
by Richard. Gower the poet was born a few years later than 
Chaucer, though he is believed to have been his college friend. 
Gower studied law ; he possessed considerable landed property 
in the counties of Nottingham and Suffolk. He wrote his prin- 
cipal work, the Confessio Amantis, in consequence of Richard II. 
meeting him in his state barge on the Thames, and asking him 
to "book some new thing;" his gravity led to his being called 
" the moral Gower." He stands half way between the minstrel 
of Normandy and the English poet, and he seems to have trans- 
ferred the faults of a declining literature into the language of one 
newly arisen. " Gower prepared for his bones a resting in the 
monastery of St. Mary Overie, where, somewhat after the old 
fashion he lieth, right sumptuously buried, with a garland on his 
head, in token that he in his life-daies flourished freshly in liter- 
ature and science." 

Richard, during childhood and youth, was committed in suc- 
cession to the charge of several guardians ; and, like children 
(says an historian) whose nurses have been often changed, he 
thrived none the better for it. He did good or evil according to 
the influence of those around him, and had no decided inclina- 
tion, except for ostentation and licentiousness. In his reign, lay- 
men, among whom Chaucer and Gower are illustrious examples, 
received occasionally a learned education ; and indeed the great 
number of gentlemen who studied in the inns of court is a con- 
clusive proof that they w^ere not generally illiterate. The com- 
mon law required some knowledge of two languages. Upon the 
whole, we are inclined to think, that in the year 1400, or at the 
accession of Henry IV., the average instruction of an English 



36 ScJiool-Days of Eminent Men, 






gentleman of the first class would comprehend common reading 
and writing, a tolerable familiarity with French, and a slight 
tincture of Latin ; the latter attained, or not, according to his cir- 
cumstances, as school learning is at present. 

HENRY IV. HIS ACCOMPLISHMENTS. 

Of Henry IV. of Bolingbroke, eldest son of John of Gaunt, 
and born in the ancient castle of Bolingbroke, in Lincolnshire, in 
1366, few early traits are recorded ; and as his father was a sub- 
ject, nothing of material interest was at the time associated with 
his appearance in the world. Blanche, his mother, survived the 
birth of Bolingbroke not more than three years ; he thus early 
lost the benefit of maternal care, which, with his father's subse- 
quent life of profligacy, may account for the excesses of Prince 
Henry. Richard II. presented him, on his father's second mar- 
riage, with a costly ring. Froissart reports that Henry Boling- 
broke was a handsome young man ; and we read that he excelled 
in music. It was his custom every year, on the Feast of the 
Lord's Supper — that is, on the Thursday before Easter — to 
clothe as many poor persons as equaled the number of years he 
had completed on the preceding birthday. Henry was a gallant 
young knight, often distinguishing himself at jousts and tourna- 
ments, and in the Pell Rolls of 1401 is recorded the payment of 
10^. " to Bartolf Vanderlurey, who fenced with the present lord 
the King, with the long sword, and was hurt in the neck by the 
said lord the King." Henry was of an active, ardent, and en- 
terprising spirit ; but we have no ground for believing that he 
devoted much of his time and thought to the education of his 
children. In this reign was built a library in Durham College 
(now Trinity College), Oxford, for the large collection of books 
of Richard of Bury, said to consist of more volumes than all the 
bishops of England had then in their possession. 

Richard of Bury had bestowed certain portions of his valuable library upon a com- 
pany of scholars residing in a Hall at Oxford; and he drew up "A provident arrangement 
by which books may be lent to strangers,"'meaning students of Oxford not belongingto 
that Hall. The custody of the books was deputed to five of the scholars, of which three, 
and in no case fewer, could lend any books for inspection and use only; but for copying 
and transcribing, he did not allow any book to pass without the walls of the house. 
And when any scholar, whether secular or religious, was qualified for the favor, and de- 
manded the loan of a book, the keepers, provided they had a duplicate of the book, might 
lend it to him, taking a security exceeding in value the book lent. The reader may 
smile at the caution; but we have known some possessors ©f books in our own day adopt 
similar rules. 

HENRY V. AT QUEEN'S COLLEGE, OXFORD. 

Of Henry V. of Monmouth, the childhood and youth are chron- 
icled more nearly cotemporarily than those of his predecessor. 
Henry was born in 1387, in the castle of Monmouth, of which 



Progress of Education. 37 

the crumbling ruins are now a few vine-clad walls, washed by 
the Monmow. From this castle, tradition says, that being a 
sickly child, Henry was sent to Cornfield, six or seven miles 
distant, to be nursed there ; and the cradle in which he was rocked 
was shown there some thirty years since. In the Wardrobe Ac- 
counts of Henry's father we find an entry of a charge for a " long 
gown" for the young Lord Henry ; and we further learn that 
very shortly after he ascended the throne, he settled an annuity 
of 20/. upon his nurse, Johanna Waring, " in consideration of 
what was done to him in former days." In the records of the 
Duchy of Lancaster, in the year 1397, is the charge of 8c?. paid "for 
harp-strings purchased for the harp of the young Lord Henry ;" 
\2d. "for a new scabbard of a sword;" and " Is. 6d. for three - 
fourths of an ounce of tissue of black silk for a sword of young 
Lord Henry." In 1396, we find a charge of " As. for seven books 
of grammar contained in one volume, and bought at London for the 
young Lord Henry." There is reason to believe that so early as 
1399, Henry was placed in Queen's College, Oxford, under the 
superintendence of his half-uncle, Henry Beaufort, then Chancel- 
lor of the University ; so that even the above volume of grammar 
may have been first learned under the direction of the future 
Cardinal. 

In the old building of Queen's College, a chamber used to be pointed out by succes- 
sive generations as Henry the Fifth's* It stood over the gate- way opposite to St. Ed- 
mund's Hall. A portrait of him in painted glass, commemorative of his residence there, 
was seen in the window, with an inscription (as it should seem of comparatively recent 
date) in Latin: 

To record the fact forever. 

The Emperor of Britain, 

The Triumphant Lord of France, 

The Conqueror of his enemies and of himself, 

Henry V. 

Of this little chamber, 

Once the great Inhabitant. 

The tender age of Henry at this period does not render the 
tradition improbable ; for many then became members of the 
University at the time they would now be sent to school. Those 
who were designed for the military profession were compelled to 
bear arms, and go to the field at the age of fifteen ; consequently, 
the little education they received was confined to their boyhood. 
Hence it may be inferred that Henry (though perhaps without 
himself bein"; enrolled amono; the regular academics) lived with 
his uncle, then chancellor, and studied under his superintendence. 
It is nearly certain that before the October term, 1398, Henry 
had been removed to King Richard's palace, carefully watched ; 
whilst in 1399 he accompanied that monarch in his expedition 

* Fuller, in hi* Church History, informs us that Henry's chamber over the College 
gate was then inhabited by the historian's friend, Thomas Barlow, and adds, " his pic- 
ture remaineth there to this day in brass. 



38 School-Bays of Eminent 3Ien. 

to Ireland. Shortly after his return, on his father's accession* 
he was created Prince of Wales ; and had he subsequently become 
a student of the University, its archives would have furnished 
evidence of the fact ; but, as the boy of the Earl of Derby, or the 
Duke of Hereford, living with his uncle, the omission of his 
name is not remarkable. In all probability his uncle superin- 
tended his general education, intrusting the details to others 
more competent to instruct him in the various branches of litera- 
ture. Among his college associates was John Carpenter, of 
Oriel ; and Thomas Rockman, an eminent astronomer and learned 
divine, of Merton. Among other pious and learned persons much 
esteemed by Henry was Robert Mascall, a Carmelite friar, con- 
fessor to his father; and Stephen Partington, a popular preacher, 
whom some of the nobility invited to court. It is impossible to 
read Henry's letters, and reflect on what is authentically recorded 
of him, without being impressed by a conviction that he had 
imbibed a very considerable knowledge of Holy Scripture, even 
beyond the young men of his day ; whilst chroniclers bear testi- 
mony that "he held in great veneration such as surpassed in 
learning and virtue." Here we take leave of Henry, since an 
event in the autumn of 1398 turned the whole stream of his life 
into an entirely new channel, and led him by a very brief course 
to the inheritance of the throne of England.* 

Prior to the reign of Henry V., specimens of English correspondence are rare; letters 
previously to that time, were usually written in French or Latin, and were the the pro- 
ductions chiefly of the great or the learned. The letters of learned men were verbose 
treatises, mostly on express subjects; those of the great, who employed scribes, resem- 
bled, from their formality, legal instruments. We have nothing earlier than the 15th 
century which can be termed & familiar letter. The material, too, upon which these let- 
ters were written, up to the same perind, wms usually vellum; very few instances, indeed, 
occurring, of more ancient date, of letters written on common paper. The eailiest royal 
signature known in this country is the signature of Richard III. — Ellis's Original Letters, 
1st series, p. 9. 

EARLY PAROCHIAL SCHOOLS SCHOOLS IN CHURCHES. 

Plain Education dates from the fourteenth century ; reading 
and writing were the chief branches, but children were also 
taught grammar. Parochial grammar-schools occur in the fif- 
teenth century ; but so few were they, and so low was the gram- 
mar-learning taught in them, that in 1477, several clergymen of 
London petitioned Parliament for leave to set up schools in their 
respective churches, not only to check schools conducted by illit- 
erate men, but also to provide for the great demand for tuition, 

* Selected and abridged from Henry of Monmouth. By J. Endell Tyler, B.D. It is a 
curious fact, not generally known (says Mr. Tyler), that Henry IV. in ih^ first year of his 
reign took pos.session of all the property of the Provost and Fellows of Queen's Col- 
lege (on the ground of mismanagement), and appointed the Cliancellor. the Chief Jus- 
tice, the Master of the Rolls, and others, guardians of the College. This is, we think, 
scarcely consi^tent with the suppositifm of his son being resident there at the time, or 
of his selecting that college for him afterward. 



Progress of Education. 39 

in consequence of the law which made it illegal to put children 
to private teacher?, enacted to prevent the spread of Wicklivism, 
or the doctrines of Wickliffe. This church school was held in a 
room at or over the porch called parvise.^ The custom is alluded 
to by Shakspeare ; and we find it as late as the seventeenth cen- 
tury, for John Evelyn, the son of a gentleman of fortune, and 
born at Wotton, in 1620, states in his Diary that he was not 
initiated into any rudiments till he was four years old, and then 
one Frier taught him at the church porch. 

EDUCATION AT HOME — MUSIC. 

Education, in all the early stages, was very rarely conducted 
at home, but at courts, or in the houses of nobles, etc. The period 
of infancy and boyhood was intrusted to women, and at the age 
of eleven years, tuition was commenced in earnest. In royal 
houses, the parents selected some veteran and able soldier of 
noble family, under whose roof their son was placed, and in 
whose castle, commencing his services as a page, he received in- 
structions in the exercises and accomplishments befitting his con- 
dition. Thus, Edward the Black Prince delivered his son Rich- 
ard, afterward Richard II., to Sir Guiscard d'Aigle, as his mili- 
tary tutor. Henry IV. intrusted the education of his son Henry, 
afterward the valorous Henry V., to Sir Thomas Percy, a brave 
and veteran warrior; and James I. of Scotland being taken pris- 
oner, and confined in the Tower of London and Windsor Castle, 
received there an excellent education through Henry IV. of 
England, who placed him under the care of Sir John de Pelham, 
constable of Pevensey Castle, a man of note, both as a statesman 
and a warrior. 

James, during his captivity in the Round Tower of Windsor Castle, composed " The 
King's Quair," — that is, the King's quire^ or book. It is a serious poem, of nearly 1400 
lines, arranged in seven-line stanzas ; the style in great part allegorical ; the subject, the 
love of the royal poet for the Lady Joanna Beaufori, whom he eventually married, and 
whom he is said to have first beheld walking in the garden below from the window of his 
prison. In the concluding stanza James makes grateful mention of his — 

Ministers dear, 
Gower and Chaucer, that on the steppes sate 

Of rhetorick while they were live and here, 
Superlative as poets laui'eate, 
Of morality and eloquence ornate ; 

and he is evidently an imitator of the great Father of English poetry. The poem, too, must 
be reg-arded as written in Enghsh rather than in Scotch, though the differeuce between the 
two dialects was not so great at this early date as it afterward became ; and although James, 
who was in his eleventh year when he was carried away to England in 1405, by Henry IV., 
may not have altogether avoided the peculiarities of his native idiom. — G. L. Craik, M.A. 

* The Sergeant-at-law in Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims had been at parvise. The 
choristers of Norwich Cathedral were formerly tauglit in the parvise. i. e.. tlie porch 
The chamber over a porch in some churches may have been the school m^ant — as at 
Poncaster Church, and at Sherborne Abbey Church. •' Responsions," or the preliminary 
examinations at Oxford, are said to be held in parvise, i e. in the porch, or antecnamoer 
before the schools. Wotton Church porch has not a room. 



40 School-Bays of Eminent Men, 

The King's Quair contains poetry superior to any except that of Chaucer, produced in 
England before the reign of Elizabeth. Two other poems of considerable length, in a hu- 
morous style, have also been attributed to James I. — ''Peebles to the Play," and Christ^s Kirk 
on the Green" — both in the Scottish dialect ; but they are more probably the productions 
of his equally gifted and equally unfortunate descendant, James V., slain at Fiodden, in 
1513. Chalmers, however, assigns the former to James I. 

Among the elegant accomplishments which were blended with 
the early tuition of both sexes, we should not omit to notice 
music, which was intended to render the learner a delightful 
companion in the hall at home, as his skill in warlike exercises 
was calculated to make him a formidable enemy in the field. 
The science of music, both instrumental and vocal ; the composi- 
tion and recitation of ballads, roundelayes, and other minor 
pieces of poetry ; and an acquaintance with the romances and 
popular poems of the times, were all essential branches in the 
system of education which was adopted in every castle in the 
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The brave and accomplished 
military leader, Sir John Chandos, sang sweetly, and solaced his 
master, Edward III. on a voyage, by his ballads ; and the Count 
de Foix, a celebrated hero, frequently requested his secretaries, 
in the intervals of severer occujDation, to recreate themselves by 
chanting songs and roundelayes. Again, Churchmen studied 
music by profession ; and the law students at the Inns of Court 
learned singing, and all kinds of music. A few of our early sov- 
ereigns were skilled in music : Richard II. is known to have as- 
sisted at divine service, and to have chanted a collect-prayer ; 
Henry IV. is described as of shining talents in music ; and Stow 
tells us that Henry Y. " delighted in songs, meters, and musical 
instruments." 

We obtain an interesting glimpse of Female Education from a curious book of Advice to 
Ladies, written in the year 1371. At this time, in the upper ranks, the education of fe- 
males was generally conducted in the monasteries, or in the family of some relative or 
friend, if possible, of superior rank ; the latter from its being thought that abroad daughters 
would be more likely to form advantageous connections than at home. Under all these 
forms, however, the character of the education seems to have been nearly the same. It 
consisted of needle-work, confectionery (or the art of preserving fruits, etc.), surgery (or a 
knowledge of the healing art,) and the rudiments of church music ; to which, in an edu- 
cation at a monasterj', was generally added the art of reading; The prejudices of the 
times, and particularly of the male sex, were opposed to any higher degree of cultivation of 
the mind : ai-ising, probably, from a suspicion, that it might render women an overmatch 
for their admirers. Nor is it certain that the reading of the time was beneficial. " Instead 
of reading bokes of wisdom and science," says the author of the Adince, " they studye in 
nought but the bokes that speak of love's fables, and other worldlie vanities ;" he also 
considers writing as dangerous and unnecessary, and thinks it better " if women can nought 
of it." lie appears to have set two priests and two clerks to select a book of " ensamples," 
or extracts from the Bible, the acts of Kings, the chronicles of France, Greece, and England. 
In speaking of female manners, one of the first faults which he corrects, and which was 
natural to ignorant and uneducated giris, was that of levity. Among other points, he fixes 
on their conduct at mass, at which the grossest irreverence and disorder are known to have 
prevailed. The church, during the celebration of the service, seems to have been an estab- 
lished scene of gossip and flirtation. The men came with their hawks and dogs, walking 
to and fro to converse with their friends, to make bargains and appointments, and to show 
their splendid coats. 



'^ Progress of Education. 41 

/ 

CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF HENPwY THE SIXTH. 

It has been shrewdly observed that there are few instances of 
kings who ascend the throne at a very early age answering the 
expectations of their people. In our own history Richard 11. 
and Henry VI. are striking instances of this remark ; for which 
there seems to be an obvious reason, viz, that a minor king re- 
ceived generally a worse education than he who is only destined 
to a throne. 

Henry VL, called of Windsor, from having been born there in 
1421, was not quite nine months old when the death of his father, 
Henry V., left him King of England. Fabian relates this extra- 
ordinary instance of the adulation paid to this minor sovereign : 
" Henry VI., when but eight months old, sat in his mother's lap in 
the parliament chamber ; and the speaker made a famous prce- 
position, in which he said much of the providence of God, who 
had endowed the realm with the presence of so toward a prince 
and sovereign governor" His childhood was passed at Windsor 
Castle. In accordance with the will of his dying father, the boy 
Henry, when six years old, was placed under the tutelage of 
Richard de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, the companion in arras 
of Henry V. This appointment was made under the authority 
of the Council : Warwick was to instruct his pupil in all things 
worthy to be known, nurturing him in the love and fear of his 
Creator, and in hatred of all vice. The Earl held this office till 
the King was sixteen : his discipline was very strict ; for the pupil 
was not to be spoken to, unless in the presence of Warwick, or of 
the four knights appointed to be about his person ; " as," says the 
entry in the Rolls of Parliament, " the King, by the speech of 
others in private, has been stirred by some from his learning, and 
spoken to of divers matters not behoveful." The Earl appears 
to have complained to the Council of the King's misconduct, for 
they promised to assist him in chastising his royal pupil for his 
defaults. Warwick applied for this aid as protection against the 
young Henry's displeasure and indignation, "as the King is 
grown in years, in stature of his person, and in conceit of his 
high authority." Severe corporal punishment was, it appears, 
considered the most efficient instrument of good education at this 
period ; and Warwick, doubtless, helashed the young King. 

How much of the fire of the Platnagenets was trodden out of Henry VI. by the scTerities 
of his early discipline cannot now be estimated. He was born to a most unhappy position ; 
but it is satisfactory to believe that his hard lot was solaced by that religious trust which 
lightens the burthens of the wretched, whether on a throne or in a dungeon. The Earl 
of Warwick, who, like many other leaders of chivalry, was an enthusiastic in the efficiency 
of vows and pilgrimages, may have injured his pupil by that strong feeling of ceremonial 
devotion which caused him long to be regarded as a saint. To a right direction of that 



42 School-Days of Eminent Men. 

piety, we owe, however, the noble foundations of Eton and King's College, Cambridge. — 
worthy monuments which still call upon us to respect the memory of the most meek and 
most unfortunate of king's — Knight s Pcpiilar History of England. 

Meanwhile, the scholastic training of the young King was in- 
trusted to bis great uncle, the Bishop of Winchester, better 
known as Cardinal Beaufort ; and under his tuition, Henry 
became an accomplished scholar in all the learning of the age ; 
as well as " the truest Christian gentleman that ever sat upon a 
throne." 

The statutes of St. Mary's College, Oxford, in this reign, show 
how great must have been the inconveniences and impediments 
to study in those days from the scarcity of books : " Let no scholar 
occupy a book in the library over one hour, or two hours at most, 
so that others shall be hindered from the use of the same." 
Still there was a great number of books at an early period of the 
Church, when one book was given out by the librarian to each 
of a religious fraternity at the beginning of Lent, to be read dil- 
igently during the year, and to be returned the following Lent. 
Books were first kept in chests, and next chained to the desks, 
lest their rarity and value might tempt those who used them ; 
and it was a very common thing to write in the first leaf of a 
book, " Cursed be he who shall steal or tear out the leaves, or 
in any way injure this book ;" an anathema which, in a modified 
form, we have seen written in books of the present day. 

HENRY THE SIXTH FOUNDS ETON COLLEGE, AND KING's 
COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. 

Hall, the chronicler, when speaking of the causes which led 
Henry VL to found Eton College, and King's College, Cam- 
bridge, says of him : " he was of a most liberal mind, and espe- 
cially to such as loved good learning ; and those whom he saw 
profiting in any virtuous science, he heartily forwarded and em- 
braced." An ingenious writer of our own time has, however, 
more correctly characterized the young King's motive: "still 
stronger in Henry's mind was the desire of marking his gratitude 
to God by founding and endowing some place of pious instruc- 
tion and Christian worship."* Henry seems principally to have 
followed the magnificent foundations of William of Wykeham at 
Winchester and Oxford; resolving that the school which he 
founded should be connected with a college in one of the Uni- 
versities, whither the best of the foundation scholars of his school 
should proceed to complete their education, and where a perma- 
nent provision should be made for them. Standing upon the 
north terrace of Windsor Castle, near Wykeham's tower, and 

* Memoirs of Eminent Etonians. By E. S. Creasy, M.A. 



Progress of Education. 43 

looking toward the village of Eton, upon the opposite bank of 
the silver- winding Thames, we can imagine the association to 
have first prompted the devout King's design — in the words of 
the Charter, "to found, erect, and establish, to endure in all fu- 
ture time, 

A College coneisting of and of the number of one proTOst and ten priests, four clerks and 
six chorister boys, who are to serve daily there in the celebration of divine worship, and of 
twenty -five poor and indigent scholars who are to learn grammar; and also of twenty -five poor 
and infirm men, whose duty it shall be to pray there continually for our health and wel- 
fare so long as we live, and for our soul when we shall have departed this life, and for the 
souls of the illustrious Prince, Henry our father, late King of England and France ; also 
of the Lady Katherine of most noble memory, late his wife, our mother ; and for the souls 
of all our ancestors and of all the faithful who are dead: (consisting) also of one master or 
teacher in grammar, whose duty it shall be to instruct in the rudiments of grammar the 
said indigent scholars and all others whatsoever who may come together from any part of 
our Kingdom of England to the said College, gratuitously and without the exaction of 
money or any other thing." 

The works were commenced in 1441, with the chapel of the 
College; and to expedite the building, workmen were "pressed" 
from every part of the realm. The freemasons received Zs. a 
week each, the stone-masons and carpenters 35. ; plumbers, saw- 
yers, tilers, etc., ^d. a day, and common laborers ^d. The 
grant of arms expresses this right royal sentiment : " If men are 
ennobled on account of ancient hereditary wealth, much more is 
he to be preferred and styled truly noble, who is rich in the 
treasures of the sciences and wisdom, and is also found diligent 
in his duty towards God." Henry appointed Wayntlete first pro- 
vost, who, with five fellows of Winchester, and thirty-five of the 
scholars of that College, became the primitive body of Etonians, 
in 1443. The works of the Chapel were not completed for many 
years ; and the other parts of the College were unfinished until 
the commencement of Henry the Eighth's reign. 

Eton, in its founder's time, was resorted to as a place of edu- 
cation by the youth of the higher orders, as well as by the class 
for whose immediate advantage the benefits of the foundation 
were primarily designed. Those students not on the foundation 
were lodged at their relations' expense in the town (oppidum) of 
Eton, and thence called Oppidans. The scholars on the founda- 
tion (since called Colle-gers) were lodged and boarded in the 
College-buildings, and at the College expense. There are two 
quadrangles, built chiefly of red brick: in one are the school 
and the chapel, with the lodgings for the scholars ; the other con- 
tains the library, the provost's house, and apartments for the Fel- 
lows. The chapel is a stately stone structure, and externally 
very handsome. The architecture is Late Perpendicular, and 
a good specimen of the style of Henry the Seventh's reign. In 
the center of the first quadrangle is a bronze statue of Henry 
VI. ; and in the chapel another statue, of marble, by John Ba- 



44 School-Bays of Eminent Men. ^ '' 

con. The foundation scholars seem to have been first placed in 
two large chambers on the ground floor, three of the upper boys 
in each ; they had authority over the others, and were responsi- 
ble for good conduct being maintained in the dormitory. Sub- 
sequently was added "the Long Chamber" as the common dor- 
mitory of all the scholars. Dinner and supper were provided 
daily for all the members of the College ; and every scholar re- 
ceived yearly a stated quantity of coarse cloth, probably first 
made up into clothing, but it has long ceased to be so used. 

The King's Scholars or Collegers are distinguished from oppi- 
dans by a black cloth gown. The boys dined at eleven, and 
supped at seven ; there being only two usual meals. 

King Henry is recorded to have expressed much anxiety for 
his young incipient Alumni. One of his chaplains relates that — 

"When King Henry met some of the students in Windsor Castle, whither they sometimes 
used to go to Tisit the King's servants, whom they knew, on ascertaining who they were, he 
admonished them to follow the path of virtue, and besides his words, would give them money 
to win over their good- will, saying, "Be good boys ; be gentle and docile, and servants of 
the Lord." (Sitis boni pueri, mites et docibiles, et servi Domini. 

The progress of the buildings was greatly checked by the 
troubles toward the close of the reign of Henry VI. ; and his 
successor, Edward IV., not only deprived Eton of large portions 
of its endowments, but obtained a bull from Pope Pius II. for 
disposing of the College, and merging it in the College of St. 
George at Windsor ; but Provost Westbury publicly and solemnly 
protested against this injustice, the bull was revoked, and many 
of the endowments were restored, though the College suffered 
severely. The number on the foundation consisted of a provost 
and a vice-provost, 6 fellows, 2 chaplains, 10 choristers, the up- 
per and lower master, and the 70 scholars. The buildings were 
continued during the reign of Henry VII., and the early years 
of Henry the Eighth, whose death saved Parliament from extin- 
guishing Eton, which was then confirmed to Edward VI. 

Among the Paston Letters is one written in 1467, by " Master Willam Paston at Eton, to 
his Worshipful Brother, John Paston, acknowledging the receipt of 8^ in a letter, to buy 
a pair of slippers ; 1 85. 4rf. to pay for his board, and thanking him for 121b. of Figgs and 81b. 
of Raisins which he was expecting by the first barge ; he then narrates how he had fallen 
in love with a young gentlewoman to whom he had been introduced by his hostess, or 
dame ; and he concludes with a specimen of his skill in Latin versification. 

A. MS document in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, shows the general system 
of the school, the discipline kept up, and the books read in the various forms, about the 
year 1560. The holidays and customs are also enumerated ; great encouragement was then 
shown to Latin versification (always the pride of Eton), and occasionally to English, among 
the students ; care was taken to teach the younger boys to write a good hand. The boys 
rose at five to the loud call of " Surgite ;" they repeated a prayer in alternate verses, as they 
dressed themselves, and made their beds, and each swept the part of the chamber close to 
his bed. They then went in a row to wash, and then to school, where the under-master 
read prayers at six ; then the praepositor noted absentees, and one examined the students' 
faces and hands, and reported any boys that came unwashed. At seven, the tuition began : 
great attention was paid to Latin composition in prose and verse, and the boys conversed in 
Latin. Friday seems to have been flogging day. Among the books read by the boys in the 



Progress of Education. 45 

two hichest forms are mentioned Caesar's Commentaries, Cicero De Officiis and De Amicitia, 
Virgil, Lucian, and, what is remarkable, tke Greek Grammar; a knowledge of Greek at this 
period being a rare accomplishment even at our unirersities. Its study was, however, 
gaining ground in Elizabeth's reign ; and in a book'published in 1586, it is stated that at Eton, 
Winchester, and Westminster, boys were then " well entered in the Latin and Greek tongues 
and rules of versifying " Throughout this MS. record is shown the antiquity of making 
the upper boys responsible for the good conduct of the lower, which has ever been the ruling 
principle at Eton — in the schools, at meal-times, in the chapel, in the playing-fields, and in 
the dormitory ; and there was a praepositor to look after dirty and slovenly boys.* 

Of scholars' expen.^es at Eton early in the reign of Elizabeth, we find a record in the ac- 
counts of the sons of Sir ^Vi!liam Cavendish, of Chatsworth. Among the items, a breast of 
mutton is charged tenpence ; a small chicken, fourpence ; a week's board five shillings each, 
besides the wood burned in their chamber ; to an old woman for sweeping and cleaning the 
chamber, twopence ; mending a shoe, one penny ; three candles, ninepenoe ; a book, Esop's 
Fables, fourpence ; two pair of shoes, sixteenpence ; two bunches of wax-lights, one penny ; 
the sum total of the payments, including board paid to the bursars of Eton College, living 
expenses for the two boys and their man, clothes, books, washing, etc., amount to 12' 125. 
Id. The expense of a scholar at the University in 1514 was but five pounds annually, af- 
fording as much accommodation as would now cost sixty pounds, though the accommoda- 
tion would be far short of that now customary. At Eton, in 1857, the number of sholars 
exceeded 700. 

The College buildings have been from time to time re-edified 
and enlarged. The Library, besides a curious and valuable col- 
lection of books, is rich in Oriental and Egyptian manuscripts, 
and beautifully illustrated missals. The Upper vSchool Room 
in the principal court, with its stone arcade beneath, and the 
apartments attached to it, were built by Sir Christopher Wren, 
at the expense of Dr. AUstree, provost in the reign of Charles 
11. 

The College Hall interior has been almost entirely rebuilt 
through the munificence of the Rev. John Wilder, one of the 
Fellows, and was reopened in October, 1857 : these improvements 
include a new open-timber roof, a louver, windows east and Avest, 
a gothic oak canopy, and a carved oak gallery over the space 
dividing the hall from the buttery. The oak paneling around 
the room is cut all over with the names of Etonians of several 
generations. 

Among the Eton festivals was the Montem, formerly celebra- 
ted every third year on Whit-Tuesday, and believed to have 
been a corruption of the Popish ceremony of the Boy Bishop. 
It consisted of a theatrical procession of pupils wearing costumes 
of various periods, for the purpose of collecting money, or " salt,'*' 
for the captain of Eton, about to retire to King's College, Cam- 
bridge. To each contributor was given a small portion of salt, 
at an eminence named therefrom Salt-Hill ; the ceremony con- 
cluding with the waving of a flag upon this hill or 3fontem.'\ 
Boating and cricket are the leading recreations at Eton : the 

* Condensed from Mr. Creasy 's Memoirs of Eminent Etonians. 

t The last Montem was celebrated at Whitsuntide, 1844. The abolition of the custom 
had long been pressed upon the College authorities, and they at length yielded to the grow- 
ing condemnation of the ceremony as an exhibition unworthy of the present enlightened 
age. A memorial of the last celebration is preserved in that picturesciue chronicle of 
events, the Illustrated London News, June 1, 1844. 



/ 



46 Scliool-Bays of Eminent 3fen. 

College walks or playing-fields, extend to the banks of the Thames, 
and the whole scene is celebrated by Gray, the accomplished 
Etonian, in his well-known Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton 
College, commencing — 



*' Ye distant spires, ye antique towers 
That crown the watery glade."' 



I 



Waynflete was the first provost of Eton. Among the eminent scholars are Archbishop 
Eotherham, and Bishop West; Croke. the celebrated Helenist, one of the first who taught 
the Greek language publicly in any university north of the Alps ; Bishop Aldrich, the friend 
of Erasmus ; Hall, the chronicler ; Bishop Foxe ; Thomas Sutton, founder of the Charter- 
house ; Sir Thomas Smith,'and Sir Henry Savile, provosts ; Admiral Sir Humphrey Gilbert ; 
Oughtred, the mathematician ; Tusser, the useful old rhymer ; Phineas and Giles Fleicher, 
the poets ; the martyrs. Fuller. Glover, Saunders, and HuUier ; Sir Henry Wotton. pro- 
vost ; * Robert Devereux, third Earl of E.-^sex ; Waller, the poet ; Robert Boyle ; Henry 
More, the Platonist ; Bishops Pearson and Sherlock ; the ever-memorable John Hales, "the 
Walking Library;"' Bishops Barrow and Fleetwood; Lord Camden ; the poets Gray, Broome, 
and West; Fielding, the novelist; Dr. Arne. the musical composer ; Horace Walpole; the 
Marquis of Cranby; Sir William Draper ; Sir Joseph Banks; Marquis Cornwallis ; Lord howe ; 
Kichard Person, the Greek Emperor ; the poets Shelley, Praed, and Milman ; Hallam, the 
histoi'ian ; and W. E. Gladstone, the statesman. 

The Premiers of England during tlie last century and a half were mostly educated at 
Eton. Thus, Lord Bolingbroke, Sir William Wyndham, Sir Robert Walpole, Lord Towns- 
hend, Lord Lyttleton, Lord Chatham, the elder Fox, Lord North, Charles James Fox, Mr. 
Wyndham, the Marquis Wellesley, Lord Grenville, Canning, the Duke of Wellington, Lord 
Grey, and the Earl of Derby — were all Etonians. 

Among the celebrities of the College should not be forgotten the periodical work entitled 
The Etonian^ the contributors to which were Eton scholars, and the author-publisher was 
the Etonian Charles Knight — a name long to be remembered in the commonwealth of Eng- 
lish literature. 

King's College, which Henry founded in 1441, at Cambridge, 
to be recruited from Eton, is the richest endowed collegiate 
foundation in that University. The Statutes declare that there 
shall be a provost and 70 poor scholars.! The Reformation and 
the changes brought about by three centuries, have, however, 
rendered obedience to the Statutes impossible, and they are now 
virtually the Statutes of William of Wykeham, which he had 
framed for New College. The Civil Wars of the Houses of 
York and Lancaster, and the violent death of the royal founder, 
left the College buildings unfinished ; while Edward lY. impov- 
erished its revenues, and even dissolved the College. Henry 
VII., in whose reign the College petitioned Parliament, on account 
of its straitened resources, contributed to the completion of the 

* Wotton is described as " a person that was not only a fine gentleman himself, but very 
skilled in the art of making others fo." 

t Unquestionably Colleges were eleemo.synary foundations, but their sole object was not, 
like that of an almshouse, to relieve indigence. They were intended, no doubt, to main- 
tain scholars who were poor; and in an age when learning was regarded as ignoble by the 
great, and when nearly all but the great were poor, persons willing to enter the University 
as students could hardly be found, except among the poor. If, in modern days, those who 
impart or seek education in the Unlver'^ities are not indigent, it must not be thought, 
therefore, that the poor have been robbed of their birthright. Rather the Universities, 
among other agencies, have so rai.«ed the condition of society, and mental cultivation is now 
so differe' tly regarded, that persons intended for the learned professions are at present 
found only among the comparatively wealthy. Such persons, if elected for their merit to 
Fellowships and Scholarships, would faithfully fulfill the main objects of founders, namely, 
the promotion of religion and learning. — Report of the Oxford University C^mfnission,vv. 
39-40. 



Progress of Education, 47 

chapel. The style is Late Perpendicular, but very rich. The 
interior, with the stained glass windows, was completed by Henry 
yill., under the direction of Bishop Foxe. 

JOHN CARPENTER AND THE CITY OF LONDON SCHOOL. 

Toward the close of the long reign of Edward III. there was 
born in London a good citizen named John Carpenter, who being 
styled in the documents of his time clericus (clerk), was an edu- 
cated man, and is supposed to have studied at one of the Inns of 
Court for the profession of the law. He became Town Clerk of 
the City ; and compiled a large volume in Latin of the civic 
laws, customs, privileges, and usages, a book of great value and 
authority. He was at the expense of painting the celebrated 
"Dance of Death" in St. Paul's cloister, being an encourager 
of the arts, and he was a personal acquaintance of Lidgate, the 
monk of Bury. He was 20 years Secretary and Town Clerk, 
sat in parliament for the City, and was Governor of St. Anthony's 
Hospital, in Threadneedle-street. At his death he bequeathed 
certain property in the City " for the finding and bringing up of 
foure poore men's children with meate, drink, apparell, learning 
at the schooles in the universities, etc., until they be preferred, 
and then others in their places for ever." In 1633, however, 
this property yielded only 29Z. 135. 4c?. per annum. At this time 
the boys wore "coats of London russet" with buttons; and they 
had periodically to show their copy books to the Chamberlain, 
in proof of the application of the charity. During the lapse 
of nearly four centuries, the value of Carpenter's estates had aug- 
mented from 19/. 10s. to nearly 900/., or nearly five and forty 
fold. Int 1835, he funds were greatly increased by subscription, 
and a large and handsome school built by the city upon the site 
of Honey-lane market, north of Cheapside, at a cost of 12,000/., 
to accommodate 400 scholars. The citizens have, in gratitude, 
erected upon the great staircase of the school a portrait statue 
of Carpenter, in the costume of his age : he bears in his left 
hand his Liber Albus, a collection of the City laws, customs, and 
privileges. The statue is placed upon a pedestal, inscribed 
with a compendious history of the founder, and his many benev- 
olent acts. 

Such has been the goodly increase of Carpenter's charity. 
It is not unreasonable to suppose that he may have been prompt- 
ed to the bequest by the celebrity of the schools of St. Anthony's 
Hospital, of which he was master. In the scholastic disputa- 
tions amongst the grammar-schools, it commonly presented the 
best scholars. Out of this school sprung the great Sir Thomas 
More ; Dr. Heath, Archbishop of York and Lord Chancellor ; 



48 Scliool-Bays of Eminent 3Ien, 

Archbishop Whitgift ; and the celebrated Dean Colet, the founder 
of St. Paul's School. 

JIERCERS' SCHOOL. THE FIRST GRAMMAR SCHOOL. 

In the twenty-fifth year of the reign of Henry VI. — 1447 — 
there was presented to Parliament a petition by four clergymen 
setting forth the lack of grammar-schools and good teachers in 
the City of London ; and praying leave (which was granted to 
them) to establish schools, and appoint competent masters in 
their respective parishes. " It were expedyent," say they, " that 
in London were a sufficient number of scholes, and good enfour- 
mers in gramer ; and not for the singular avail of two or three 
persons grevously to hurt the multitude of jong peple of al this 
land. For wher there is grete nombre of lerners and few techers, 
and to noon others, the maistres waxen rid of monie, and the 
lerners pouerer in connyng, as experyence openlie shewith, agenst^ 
all vertue and ordre of well publik." ■ 

This is generally considered to have been the origin of Free ' 
Grammar Schools, properly so called ; but the only one of the 
schools established immediately in consequence of this petition 
which has survived to the present time is the Mercers' School, 
which was originally founded at St. Thomas de Aeons (the site 
of Mercers' Hall, in Cheapside),* for 70 scholars of any age or 
place, subject to the management of the Mercers' Company. 
Among the early scholars were Dean Colet, Bishop Thomas, and 
Bishop Wren. The site of the school-house was changed four 
times ; and it is now on College-hill, on the site of Whittington's 
Alms-houses, " God's House, or Hospital," which have been re- 
built at Highgate. It is at this day a strange location for a seat 
of learning, surrounded by hives of merchandise, and close to 
one of the oldest sites of commerce in the city, its turmoil grates 
harshly upon the quiet so desirable for a youth of study. 

ST. Paul's school founded. 

In the reign of Edward IV., in 1466, there was born in the 
parish of St. Antholin, in the city of London, one John Colet, 
the eldest son of Sir Henry Colet, Knight, twice Lord Mayor, 
who had, besides him, twenty-one children. In 1483, John Colet 
was sent to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he passed seven 
years, and took the usual degrees in arts. Here he studied 
Latin, with some of the Greek authors through a Latin medium 
and mathematics. Having thus laid a good foundation for learn- 

* In the porch of Merc«r's Chapel, in Cheapside, Guy (founder of Guy's Hospital) was 
apprenticed to a bookseller in 1660 ; the house waa rebuilt after the Great Fire, and was 
rented by Guy, then a master bookseller. 



Progress of Education. 49 

ing at home, he traveled in France and Italy from 1493 to 1497; 
he had previously been preferred to the rectory of Dennington, 
in Suffolk, being then in acolyth's orders. At Paris, Colet be- 
came acquainted with the scholar Budoeus, and was afterward in- 
troduced to Erasmus. In Italy he contracted a friendship with 
Grocyn, Linacre, Lilly, and Latimer, all of whom were studying 
the Greek language, then but little known in England. Whilst 
abroad, he devoted himself to divinity, and the study of the civil 
and canon law. Colet returned to England in 1497, and subse- 
quently rose through various degrees of preferment to be Dean 
of St. Paul's. By his lectures and other means, he greatly 
assisted the spirit of inquiry into the Holy Scriptures which 
eventually produced the Reformation. He had, however, many 
difficulties to contend with ; and tired with trouble and persecu- 
tion, he withdrew from the world, resolving in the midst of life 
and health, to consecrate his fortune to some lasting benefaction, 
which he performed in the foundation of St. Paul's School, at 
the east end of St. Paul's churchyard, in 1512 ; and, "it is hard 
to say whether he left better lands for the maintenance of his 
school, or wiser laws for the government thereof." — Fuller. 

The original school-house, built 1508-12, was destroyed in 
the Great Fire of 1666, but was rebuilt by AVren. This second 
school was taken down in 1824, and the present school built 
of stone from the designs of George Smith : it has a handsome 
central portico upon a rusticated base, projecting over the street 
pavement. The original endowment and for several years the 
only endowment of the school, was bbl. 14s. lOlof., the annual 
rents of estates in Buckinghamshire, which now produce 1858^. 
165. \Oh.d. a-year; and, with other property, make the present 
income of the school upward of 5000^. Lilly, the eminent 
grammarian, the friend of Erasmus and Sir Thomas More, was 
the first master of St. Paul's, and " Lilly's Grammar" is used 
to this day in the school ; the English rudiments were written by 
Colet, the preface to the first edition probably by Cardinal Wol- 
sey ; the Latin syntax chiefly by Erasmus, and the remainder 
by Lilly : thus, the book may have been the joint production of 
four of the greatest scholars of the age. Colet directed that the 
children should not use tallow, but wax candles in the school ; 
fourpence entrance -money was to be given to the poor scholar 
who swept the school ; and the masters were to have livery gowns, 
" delivered in clothe." 

Colet died in his 53d year, in 1519. He wrote several works 

in Latin ; the grammar which he composed for his school was 

called " Paul's Accidence." The original Statutes of the school, 

signed by Dean Colet, were many years since accidentally 

4 



50 School-Days of Eminent 3Ien. 

picked up at a bookseller's, and by the finder presented to the 
British Museum. The school is for 153 boys "of every nation, 
country and class;" the 153 alluding to the number of fishes 
taken by St. Peter (John xxi. 2). The education is entirely 
classical ; the presentations to the school are in the gift of the 
Master of the Mercers' Company ; and scholars are admitted at 
fifteen, but eligible at any age after that. Their only expense is 
for books and wax tapers. There are several valuable exhibi- 
tions, decided at the Apposition, held in the first three days of the 
fourth week after Easter, when a commemorative oration is de- 
livered by the senior boy, and prizes are presented from the 
governors. In the time of the founder, the " Apposition dinner" 
was " an assembly and a litell dinner, ordayned by the surveyor, 
not exceedynge the pryce of four nobles." 

In the list of eminent Paulines (as the scholars are called) 
are. Sir Anthony Denny and Sir William Paget, privy counselors, 
to Henry VIII. ; John Leland, the antiquary ; John Milton, our 
Great epic poet ; Samuel Pepys, the diarist ; John Strype, the 
ecclesiastical historian ; Dr. Calamy, the High Churchman ; the 
Great Duke of Marlborough ; R. W. Elliston, the comedian ; Sir 
C. Mansfield Clarke, Bart. ; Lord Chancellor Truro, etc. Among 
the annual prizes contended for is a prize for a copy of Latin 
Lyrics, given by the parent of a former student named Thurston, 
the High Master to apply a portion of the endowment to keeping 
up the youth's gravestone in the Highgate Cemetery. 

EDWARD THE FOURTH AND HIS TUTORS. 

Edward IV., born at Rouen, in 1441, has little if any claim 
to be recorded as a promoter of education. We have seen how 
he impoverished the two royal Colleges of his predecessor, Henry 
VI., at Eton and Cambridge, by seizing upon their endowments, 
and endeavoring to divert the streams of their munificence. 
The whole life of Edward was divided between the perils of civil 
war, and unrestrained sensual indulgence. Nevertheless, Edward 
drew up for the observance of his offspring, a set of regulations, 
which so closely corresponded with those made by his mother, 
that it may be fairly inferred he followed the same plans which 
had been strictly enforced in the education and conduct of him- 
self and his brothers in their own youth in Ludlow Castle.* 
Though the discipline was constant and severe, the noble chil- 
dren expressed with familiarity their childish wishes to their 
father and communicated to him their imaginary grievances. 
This is instanced in a letter preserved in the Cottonian MSS. from 

* In this celebrated fortress, now a mass of picturesque ruins, Milton produced his 
masque of Comus ; and in a room oyer the gateway, Butler wrote Hudibras. 



Progress of Education. 51 

Edward to his father, written when he was a mere stripling, pe- 
titioning for some "fyne bonnets" for himself and his brother; 
and complaining of the severity of " the odious rule and de- 
meaning" of one Richard Crofte and his brother, apparently 
their tutors. 

In another letter, one of the earliest specimens extant of do- 
mestic and familiar English correspondence — it being written in 
1454, when Edward the Earl of March was twelve, and the Earl 
of Rutland eleven, years of age — addressing their father as 
" Right high and mighty Prince, our most worshipful and greatly 
redoubted lord and father," they say : 

And if it please your highness so know of our welfare at the making of this letter, we 
were iu good health of body, thanked be God ; beseeching your good and gracious father- 
hood of your daily blessing. And where you command us by your said letters to attend 
specially to our learning in our young age, that should cause us to grow to honor and wor- 
ship in our old age, please it your highness to wit, that we have attended our learning since 
we came hither, and shall hereafter, by the which we trust to God your gracious lordship 
and good fatherhood shall be pleased. 

Yet, Edward's attachment in his maturer years to his tutor 
Crofte, of whom he complains above, was evinced by the emolu- 
ments which he bestowed upon him after his accession to the 
crown. Sir Richard Crofte espoused the lady governess of the 
young Plantagenets : he lived to a great age, and was one of the 
most distinguished soldiers of his time ; he survived every mem- 
ber of the family in whose service he had been engaged, and 
had to mourn the premature and violent deaths of the whole of 
his princely pupils. — Retrospective Review, 2d S. vol. i. 

Edward has, perhaps, a better title to be considered a legis- 
lator than any other King of England, as he actually presided 
in the courts of justice, according to Daniel, who states that in 
the second year of his reign Edward sat three days together, 
during Michaelmas terra, in the Court of King's Bench, in order 
to understand the law ; and he likewise, in the 17th year, pre- 
sided at the trials of many criminals. 

COSTLINESS OF MANUSCRIPT BOOKS. 

The books that were to be found in the palaces of the great 
at this period, Avere for the most part highly illuminated manu- 
scripts, bound in the most expensive style. In the wardrobe ac- 
counts of King Edward IV., we find that Piers Baudwyn is 
paid for "binding, gilding, and dressing" of two books, twenty 
shillings each, and of four books sixteen shillings each. Now, 
twenty shillings in those days would have bought an ox. But 
the cost of this binding and garnishing does not stop here : for 
there were delivered to the binder six yards of velvet, six yards 
of silk, laces, tassels, copper and gilt clasps, and gilt nails. The 



52 School-Bays of Eminent Men. 

price of velvet and silk in those days was enormous. We may 
reasonably conclude that these royal books were as much for 
show as use. One of these books thus garnished by Edward the 
Fourth's binder, is called " Le Bible Historiaux " (the Historical 
Bible), and there are several copies of the same book in manu- 
script in the British Museum. 

Edward was, however, a reader. In his Wardrobe Accounts 
are entries for binding his Titus Livius, his Froissart, his Jose- 
phus, and his Bibles, as well as for the cost of fastening chests 
to remove his books from London to Eltham ; and the King and 
his court lent a willing ear to the great discovery of Printing, 
which was to make knowledge a common property, causing, as 
Caxton says Earl Rivers did, in translating three works for his 
press, "books to be imprinted and so multiplied to go abroad 
among the people." 

A letter of Sir John Paston, written to his mother in 1474, 
shows how scarce money was in those days for the purchase of 
luxuries like books. He says : " As for the books that were Sir 
James's (the Priest's), if it like you that I may have them, I am 
not able to buy them, but somewhat would I give, and the re- 
mainder, with a good devout heart, by my troth, I will pray for 
his soul. ... If any of them are claimed hereafter, in faith 
I will restore it." The custom of borrowing books, and not re- 
turning them, is as old as the days of the Red and White Roses. 
John Paston left an inventory of his books, eleven in number. 
One of the items in this catalogue is " A Book of Troilus, which 
William B hath had near ten years, and lent to Dame Wing- 
field, and there I saw it." 

EDWARD V. IN LUDLOAV CASTLE. 

Edward, the eldest son of Edward IV., was born in the sanc- 
tuary at Westminster, in 1470. At the death of his father he 
was twelve years old, keeping a mimic court at LudloAv Castle, 
with a council. Ordinances for the regulation of the prince's 
daily conduct were drawn up by his father shortly before his 
death, which prescribe his morning attendance at mass, his occu- 
pation " at school," his meals, and his sports. No man is to sit 
at his board but such as Earl Rivers shall allow : and at this 
hour of meat it is ordered " that there be read before him noble 
stories, as behove th a prince to understand ; and that the com- 
munication at all times, in his presence, be of virtue, honour, cun- 
ing (knowledge), wisdom, and deeds of worship, and nothing 
that shall move him to vice." — (^MS. in British Museum.^ The 
Bishop of Worcester, John Alcock, the president of the council, 
was the prince's preceptor. On the death of his father, in 1483, 



Progress of Education. 53 

Edward was called to the throne ; but after a mere nominal pos- 
session of less than three months, he and his brother, Richard 
Duke of York, both disappeared, and nothing is known as to 
their fate ; but the prophetic words of the dying Edward IV. were 
fulfilled : " If you among yourselves in a child's reign fall at de- 
bate, many a good man shall perish, and haply he too, and ye 
too, ere this land shall find peace again." 

INTRODUCTION OF PRINTING. 

The reign of Edward lY. is illustrious as being that in which 
Printing was introduced into England. From the weald of Kent 
came William Caxton to London to be apprenticed to a mercer 
or merchant. By skill and industry he arose to be appointed 
agent for the Mercers' Company in the Low Countries, Leav- 
ing, however, his mercantile employment, he was absent for two 
years in Germany, when the art of Printing from movable types 
was the wonder of the country. By this art books could be pro- 
duced at a tenth of the price of manuscripts. Caxton learned 
the mystery, and brought Printing into England, and thus ren- 
dered Bibles and other books alike the property of the great aijd 
the mean. In the Almonry of the abbey church at Westminster, 
Caxton set up the first printing-press ever known in England ; 
the first book printed here being The Game and Play of the 
Chesse, 1474, folio ; and the very house in which this great work 
was done remained until the year 1845, or 371 years from the 
date of the first book printed in England. This book was in- 
tended by Caxton for the diffusion of knowledge amongst all 
ranks of people : it contains authorities, sayings, and stories, " ap- 
plied unto the morality of the public weal, as well as of the no- 
bles and of the common people, after the game and play of chess;" 
and Caxton trusts that " other, of what estate or degree he or 
they stand in, may see in this little book that they may govern 
themselves as they ought to do." 

EARLY PRINTED BOOKS. 

The greater part of the works which were issued from the 
press during the first century of printing, both in England and 
on the continent of Europe, were such as had been written in 
the previous ages, and had long existed in manuscript. The 
first printers were always booksellers, and sold their own im- 
pressions. The two occupations were not divided till early in the 
sixteenth century. 

Ames and Herbert have recorded the titles of nearly 10,000 
distinct works, published in Great Britain, between 1471 and 
1600, equaling, on an average, seventy -six works each year. 



54 School'Bays of Eminent Men, 

Many of these works, however, were single sheets ; but, on the 
other hand, there were, doubtless, many which have not been 
recorded. The number of readers in Great Britain during this 
period was comparatively small ; and the average number of each 
book printed is not supposed to have been more than 200. 

We believe that the books which have been written in the lan- 
guages of western Europe, during the last two hundred and fifty 
years, translations from the ancient languages, of course, inclu- 
ded, are of greater value than all the books which at the begin- 
ning of that period were extant in the world. 

CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION OF RICHAKD THE THIRD. 

All that remains of the town of Fotheringhay, one of the fa- 
mous historic sites of Northamptonshire, is a small village, with 
a noble collegiate church of the fifteenth century. Here, amidst 
the ancient gilding of a shield of arms, has been traced " a boar, 
for the honour of Windsor," possessed by Richard III. : 

The bristled boar, in infant gore, 

Wallows beneath the thorny shade. — Gray. 

The device reminds one that in the castle of Fotheringhay, which 
was the principal seat of the Plantagenets, was born in 1452, 
Richard Plantagenet, usually designated as Richard the Third, 
the youngest son of Richard Duke of York, who fell at the bat- 
tle of Wakefield. Plis duchess Cecily, "the Rose of Raby," 
chose for the instruction of her numerous family, a lady govern- 
ess of rank, from whom, in the absence of their natural parents, 
the young Plantagenets received an education very superior to 
that which was then ordinarily bestowed even upon high-born 
youth. In the household of the Duchess, religious and 
moral sentiments were strictly inculcated : even at " dynner 
tyme," she had " a lecture of holy matter, either ' Hilton, of Con- 
templative and Active Life,' or other spiritual and instructive 
works;" and "in the tyme of supper," she "recyted the lecture 
that was had at dynner to those that were in her presence."* 

Notwithstanding the idle tales of monkish chroniclers relative 
to the birth of Richard — which Shakspeare has adopted from 
the narratives of prejudiced historians — no authentic record is 
extant of Richard's birth, beyond the time and place. W. Hut- 

* In the document preserved at the Board of Green Cloth, whence the above details are 
quoted, are the following Rules of the House : 

Upon earing days. At dinner by eleven of the clocke. 

Upon fasting days. At dinner by twelve of the clocke. 

At supper upon eating dayes ; for the offict-rs at four of the clocke. 

My lady and the household at five of the clocke at supper. 

Livery of fires and candles, trom the feast of All-hallows, unto Good Friday — then ex- 
pireth the time of fire and candles. 



Progress of Education. 55 

ton, who devoted eighteen years to the traditions connected with 
this prince, asserts, after minute inquiries among the localities of 
his childhood, that " his infancy was spent in his father's house, 
where he cuckt his ball and shot his taw with the same delijrht 
as other lads." But, Eichard's parents lived in royal state in 
Fotheringhay castle ; and cotemporary annals record that their 
young children were at times surprised and seized in their retire- 
ment, and had to fly in all haste from the enemy ; when the in- 
fant Richard was peculiarly watched by the Lady Cecily ; and 
Richard, despite of Lancastrian prejudices, is proved to have tes- 
tified through life the most respectful deference for his affectionate 
mother. He was little more than seven years of age when he 
was made prisoner with her at the sacking of Ludlow castle ; 
and escaping to London, instead of taking up their abode in Bay- 
nard's castle, they privately sought an asylum at the law cham- 
bers of Sir John Paston, in the Temple ;* and after the defeat 
and death of their father at Sendal, near Wakefield, the widowed 
Duchess had her children conveyed to Holland, where, under 
the protection of Philip Duke of Burgundy, at Utrecht they had 
princely and liberal 'education ; the Low Countries being, at this 
crisis, the seat of chivalry, and distinguished by its patronage of 
learning and the fine arts. Hence the exiled children were 
brought to England by order of their brother, Edward IV., to 
be instructed in the practice of arms preparatory to knighthood, 
when Richard was created Duke of Gloucester and Admiral of 
the Sea. 

The Chivalrous Education of this period was very severe. The infant aspirant for knight- 
hood, whether prince or peer, remained until the age of seven under the tutelage of his 
mother or female relatives ; while he was carefully instructed in religious and moral and 
domestic duties, and taught the limited scholastic acquirements of that period. At the age 
of seven, he was removed into the family of some renowned feudal lord, who initiated him 
into the mysteries and hardships of a martial and chivalrous career ; there he remained as 
a page until the age of fourteen, when invested with the first degree of squire he exchanged 
the short dagger for the sword, and thus became qualified to follow his gallant leader to the 
field of battle, to the joust or tournament ; to lead his war-steed, or buckle on his armor ; 
to furnish him with fresh horses and weapons ; and himself to strive and win the spurs of 
knighthood. At the age of twenty-one he was knighted with great solemnity, impressive 
rites and ceremonies, the initiation being hallowed by the Church ; and thus he became the 
warrior knight of the Middle Ages. — Abridged from Miss Halstead's Richard III. 

As Sir George Buck states that the King, when he called home 
his two brothers, entered them into the practice of arms, it is 
most probable that Gloucester passed the next seven years in the 
abode of some powerful baron, there to be well tutored in chiv- 
alrous accomplishments ; and an exchequer-roll records that 
money was " paid to Edward Earl of Warwick (' the Kingmaker') 
for costs and expenses incurred by him on behalf of the Duke of 

* Sir John Paston was knighted by Edward IV. at his coronation, probably in requital 
for this faithful service. 



56 School-Bays of Emineyit Men, 

Gloucester, the King's brother." Thus was founded the military 
fame of Richard's after years — highly extolled even by his ene- 
mies. He is thought to have passed his youth at the castle of 
Middleham, in Yorkshire, associated with the flower of English 
chivalry, practicing manly exercises, bold and athletic, or sportive, 
with " hawk and hound, seasoned with lady's smiles," and form- 
ing early friendships which lasted through life.* At the early 
age of fourteen, Richard was created a Knight of the Garter, 
which is sufficient evidence of the progress he must then have 
made in military accomplishments and princely and gallant de- 
portment. Richard's public career may be said to date from this 
period : his first act being, by appointment of the King, to trans- 
port the remains of his father for interment in the church at 
Fotheringhay ; and Richard is thought to have finished the build- 
ing of this church, from the carved boar, his crest, being on each 
side of the supporters of the royal arms, already mentioned. 
There are undoubted memorials that Gloucester was a prince of 
powerful mind, with shrewdness and discretion far beyond his 
years, and " in wit and courage equal to either of his brothers, 
though in body and prowess far beneath them both" {Sir Thomas 
More)^ nature having compensated him by strength of mind for 
inferiority in personal appearance. Lastly, he was " a high-spir- 
ited youth, whom all were praising and applauding;" yet none 
have been more grievously misrepresented in after life, as is 
proved by the Public Statutes of his reign. He bestowed alms 
on various religious bodies, and was a benefactor to a college in 
each University. And we learn from Rymer that Richard had 
in his service an Italian whose name was Titus Livius, and who 
was both Poet and Orator to the Duke. 

Yet how perversly has the character of Richard been vilified. The magic powers and 
Lancastrian partialities of Shakspeare, based on Sir Thomas More, have fixed this calumny 
in the public mind: in the reign of James I. the middle classes referred to Shalcspeare for 
English history ; and the Great Duke of Marlborough, Lord Chatham, and Southey, the 
poet, acknowledge their principal acquaintance with English history to have been derived 
from Shakspeare's historical dramas. 

TROUBLED BOYHOOD OF HENRY YII. 

Henry VII., the son of Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond, 

* One of Richard's most devoted associates at Middleham was the young Lord Lovell, 
whose attachment to Gloucester in after times led him into manj' tragical vicissitudes : he 
accompanied the prince in most of his military campaigns ; during the protectorate he held 
the lucrative office of chief builer of England ; wore one of the swords of justice, and walked 
on the king's left hand, at his coronation ; and after attending him to the battle of Bosworth. 
he is supposed to have been starved to death at his own seat, Minster Lovell, in Oxford- 
shire; the skeleton of a man seated in a chair, with his head reclining upon a table, being 
accidentally discovered there in a chamber underground, towards the close of the 17th cen- 
tury. The Lord Lovell probably took refuge in this place of concealment after his defeat 
at the battle of Stoke, a large reward being offered for his apprehension ; and his melan- 
choly end is supposed to have occurred from neglect on the part of those who were intrusted 
with his secret. — Lingard, vol. v. p. 290. 



Progress of Education, 5T 

and Margaret Beaufort, his countess, was born in the castle of 
Pembroke, in 1456. The small apartment in which Henry was 
born is represented to be near the chapel in the castle ; but Le- 
land, who lived near that time, states that the monarch first saw 
the light in one of the handsome rooms of the great gateway : 
" In the latter ward I saw the chambre where King Henry the 
Seventh was borne, in knowledge whereof a chymmeney is now 
made with the amies and badges of King Henry VII." His 
father dying in the following year, left his infant son Henry to 
the care of his brother, Jasper Earl of Pembroke. His mother 
was twice remarried : she was rich, pious, charitable, and gener- 
ous ; and to her bounty Christ's College, Cambridge, and St. 
John's College, Cambridge, owe their existence. The Countess 
also established a Professorship of Divinity in each university, 
the holders of which are called Lady Margaret's Professors : she 
likewise appointed a public preacher at Cambridge, whose duties 
are now confined to the delivery of one Latin sermon yearly. 

Henry was cradled in adversity, but found a protector in his 
uncle, the Earl of Pembroke, till the earl was attainted, and fled ; 
when his castle and earldom were granted to Baron William 
Herbert, who coming to take possession, and finding there Mar- 
garet and her son Henry, then in his fifth year, he was carried 
by that nobleman to his residence, Raglan Castle, Monmouth- 
shire, now an ivied ruin. Long afterward, Henry told the French 
historian, Comines, that he had either been in prison, or in strict 
surveillance, from the time he was five years of age. 

Sir William's family of four sons and six daughters afiorded 
Henry companions in his own sphere of life, and gave him op- 
portunities to acquire accomplishments and practice exercises 
that would have been wholly unattainable on account of the re- 
tired habits of the Countess of Richmond. Yet, Henry grew 
up sad, serious and circumspect ; full of thought and secret obser- 
vation; peaceable in disposition, just and merciful in action. 
From the old Flemish historians, and his biographer Lord Bacon, 
it further appears that Henry "was fair and well spoken, with 
singular sweetness and blandishment of words, rather studious 
than learned, with a devotional cast of countenance ; for he was 
marvellously religious both in affection and observance." — {Life 
of Henry VII.) He appears to have excited no common degree 
of interest in the hearts of his guardians in Pembroke Castle, 
and to have continued to win upon their love and affection, as he 
advanced in years, as it is asserted that by the Lady Herbert he 
was well and carefully educated, and that Sir William desired to 
see him wedded to his favorite daughter Maud. 

After the battle of Banbury, in which Sir Richard Herbert 



68 School-Days of Eminent 3fen. 

was taken prisoner, and beheaded, the youthful Earl of Rich- 
mond, though strictly watched, and considered in the light of a 
captive, in Pembroke Castle, was most courteously treated, and 
honorably brought up by the Lady Herbert. Andreas Scott, a 
priest of Oxford, is said to have been his preceptor ; and Henry's 
cotemporary biographer, Sandford, in recording this fact, men- 
tions also the eulogiuras bestowed by Scott on his great capacity 
and aptitude for study. Nevertheless, as he was now fourteen 
years of age, his uncle, Jasper Tudor, took him from Wales, and 
carried him to London, where, after being presented to Henry 
VL, he was placed as a scholar at Eton. Such is the statement 
of Miss Halstead, quoting Sandford as her authority. Lord Ba- 
con relates, that Henry VI. washing his hands at a great feast, 
at his newly-founded College at Eton, turned toward the boy 
Henry and said : " This is the lad which shall possess quietly 
that that we now strive for ;" which vaticination has been thus 
beautifully rendered by Shakspeare : 

K. Htnry. — " My Lord of Somerset, what youth is that, 

Of whom you seem to have so tender care ? " 
Som.—'''' My liege, it i? young Henry, Earl of Richmond." 
K. Henry. — " Come hither, England's hope. If secret powers 

Suggest but truth to my divining thoughts. 

This pretty lad will prove our country's bliss. 

His looks are full of peaceful majesty ; 

His head by nature fram'd to wear a crown ; 

His hand to wield a scepkre, and himself 

Likely, in our time, to bless a royal throne. 

Make much of him, my lords ; for this is he, 

Must help you more, than you are hurt by me." 

Henry F/., Scene VL, Act IV. 

This is a favorite tradition ; but the only printed authority for 
it is that of Sandford, who, in his Genealogical History, says that 
" while he (Henry VH.) was a child and a scholar in Eton Col- 
lege, he was there by King Henry the Sixth, prophetically en- 
titled the Decider of the then difference between that prince and 
King Edward the Fourth." Hall, the chronicler, himself an 
Etonian, does not, however, record among its students the sa- 
gacious founder of the dynasty of the Tudors ; and Mr. Creasy 
has searched in vain the archives of the College for evidence. 

Miss Halstead relates, however (but without the authority), 
that the young Earl was subsequently withdrawn from Eton by 
his uncle, Jasper Tudor, and sent again, for greater security, to 
Pembroke Castle, where his mother continued to sojourn. After 
the battle of Tewkesbury, Henry was sent back to Raglan Castle, 
whence he was secretly carried off by his uncle to his own castle 
of Pembroke ; whence they escaped the search of King Edward, 
and taking to sea, were driven on the coast of Britanny, where 
they long remained in a position between guests and prisoners. 



Progress of Education. 59 

As Henrj grew to manhood, liis personal character for ability 
and courage caused him to be recognized, without any hereditary 
claim, as the head of the Lancastrian exiles. 

Philip de Comine«, who knew Henry well, testifies that he was perfect in that courtly 
breeding, which so conciliates favor in princes who are ready of access, and plausible iia 
speech. He had become master of the French languajre during his exile : and though, in 
consequence of his long imprisonment, and the trials which had saddened his early life, he 
was singularly cautious and timid, he had, nevertheless, gained wisdom from the same 
school of adversity — a wisdom that enabled him to profit by any favoring circumstance that 
might lead to more prosperous days. — Miss Hcdstead's Life oj Margaret Beaufort, p. 101. 

Henry VIL, though he was called " the Solomon of England," 
did little for the spread of education beyond his works at Eton 
College. The sayings recorded of hira show more weariness 
and cunning than knowledge of literature ; and though he pos- 
sessed great penetration, his mind was narrow. Arthur, son of 
Henry VII., we are told, was well instructed in grammar, poetry, 
oratory, and history. In this reign the purity of the Latin 
tongue was revived, the study of antiquity became fashionable, 
and the esteem for literature gradually propagated itself through- 
out Europe. The newly introduced art of Printing facilitated 
the progress of this amelioration ; though some years elapsed be- 
fore its beneficial effects were felt to any considerable extent. 

A custom of this date shows the zeal of the London scholars. 
Upon the eve of St. Bartholomew (September 5), they held 
disputations ; and Stow tells us that the scholars of divers gram- 
mar-schools disputed beneath the trees in the churchyard of the 
priory of St. Bartholomew, in "West Smithfield. These disputa- 
tions ceased with the suppression of the priory, but were revived 
one year under Edward VI., when the best scholar is stated to 
have received a silver arrow for his prize ; but in some cases, the 
prize was a silver pen. 

AN EMINENT GRAMMARIAN, AND POET LAUREATE. 

Early in the sixteenth century flourished Robert Whittington, 
the author of several grammatical treatises which were long used 
in the schools. He was born at Lichfield, about the year 1480, 
and was educated by the eminent grammarian John Stanbridge, 
in the school then attached to Magdalene College, Oxford ; and 
having taken priest's orders, he set up a grammar-school of his 
own, about 1501, possibly in London. Besides school-books, he 
wrote also Latin verse with very superior elegance ; and he is 
remembered in modern times principally as the last person who 
was made poet laureate (poeta laureatus) at Oxford. This 
honor he obtained in 15 lo, on his petition to the congregation 
of regents of the University, setting forth that he had spent four- 
teen years in studying, and twelve in teaching the art of grammar, 



60 School-Days of Eminent Men. 

(which was understood to include rhetoric and poetry, or versifi- 
cation), and praying that he might be laureated or graduated in 
the said art. These academical graduations in grammar, on oc- 
casion of which, as Warton states, a "wreath of laurel was presented 
to the new graduate, who was afterward styled poeta laiireafus,'" 
are supposed to have given rise to the appellation as applied to 
the King's poet, or versifier, who seems to have been merely a 
graduated grammarian or rhetorician employed in the service of 
the King. 

EARLY LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY VIII. 

Henry VIIL, the second son of Henry VII. and Elizabeth of 
York, was born in 1491, at his palace in his "manor of Plea- 
zaunce," at Greenwich. 

Henry was from the first destined to the Archbishopric of 
Canterbury ; " that prudent King, his father," observes Lord 
Herbert (in the History of his Life and Reign), " choosing this 
as the most cheap and glorious way of disposing of a younger 
son." He received, accordingly, a learned education ; "so that," 
continues this writer, " besides his being an able Latinist, philos- 
pher, and divine, he was (which one might wonder at in a King) 
a curious musician, as two entire masses, composed by him, and 
often sung in his chapel, did abundantly witness." But the death 
of Henry's elder brother Arthur, in 1502, made him heir to the 
crown before he had completed his eleventh year, and his cler- 
ical education was not further proceeded with. However, he 
was initiated into the learning of the ancients, and though he was 
so unfortunate as to be led into the study of the barren contro- 
versies of the schools, which was then fashionable, he still dis- 
covered, says Hume, "a capacity fitted for more useful and en- 
tertaining knowledge." He founded Trinity College, at Cam- 
bridge, and amply endowed it ; and the countenance given to 
letters by the King and his ministers rendered learning fashion- 
able. The Venetian Ambassador to England, Sebastian Gius- 
tinian, describes Henry at this period (1515), as "so gifted and 
adorned with mental accomplishments of every sort that we be- 
lieve him to have few equals in the world. He speaks English, 
French, and Latin ; understands Italian well ; plays almost oa 
every instrument ; sings and composes fairly." 

One of the means which Cardinal Wolsey employed to please 
the capricious Henry was to converse with him on favorite topics 
of literature. Cavendish, who was gentleman-usher to Wolsey, 
and who wrote his life, tells us that " his sentences and witty per- 
suasions in the council-chamber were always so pithy, that they, 
as occasion moved them, continually assigned him for his filed 



Progress of Education, 61 

tongue and excellent eloquence to be expositor unto the King in 
all their proceedings." 

Education had done much for Henry ; and of his intellectual 
ability we need not trust the suspicious panegyrics of his co- 
temporaries. His state papers and letters are as clear and pow- 
erful as those of Wolsey or of Cromwell. In addition to this, 
Henry had a fine musical taste, carefully cultivated ; he sj)oke 
and wrote in four languages ; and he possessed a knowledge of a 
multitude of subjects. He was among the first physicians of his 
age ; he was his own engineer, inventing improvements in artil- 
lery, and new constructions in ship-building. His reading was 
vast, especially in theology, which could not have been acquired 
by a boy of twelve years of age, for he was no more when he 
became Prince of Wales. He must have studied theology with 
the full maturity of his understanding. In private he was good- 
humored and good-natured. But, like all princes of the Plan- 
tagenet blood, he was a person of most intense and imperious 
will. His impulses, in general nobly directed, had never known 
contradiction ; and late in life, when his character was formed, 
he was forced into collision with difficulties with which the ex- 
perience of discipline had not fitted him to contend.* 

ILL-EDUCATED NOBILITY. 

Some amongst the highest in rank affected to despise knowl- 
edge, especially when the invention of Printing had rendered 
the ability to read more common than in the days of precious 
manuscripts. Even as late as the first year of Edward VI. 
(1547), it was not only assumed that a Peer of the Realm might 
be convicted of felony, but that he might lack the ability to read, 
so as to claim Benefit of Clergy ; for it is directed that any Lord 
of the Parliament claiming the benefit of this Act (1st Edward 
VL), '■^though he cannot read, without any burning in the hand, 
loss of inheritance, or corruption of his blood, shall be judged, 
taken, and used, for the first time only, to all intents, construc- 
tions, and purposes, as a clerk convict." 

That the nobility were unfitted, through ignorance, for the dis- 
charge of high offices in the State, at the time of the Reforma- 
tion, is shown by a remarkable passage in Latimer's " Sermon 
of the Plow," preached in 1548 : 

Why are not the noblemen and young gentlemen of England so brought up in the knowl- 
edge of God, and in learning, that they may be able to execute offices in the commonweal ? 

. . . If the nobility be well trained in godly learning, the people would follow the 
same train ; lor truly such as the noblemen be, such will the people be. . . . There- 
fore for the love of God appoint teachers and schoolmasters, you that have charge of youth, 
and give the teachers stipends worthy their pains. 

* Abridged from Froude's History of England. 



62 School-Days of Eminent Men. 

Honest old Latimer thus demanded that " the young gentle- 
men" of England should be educated, and be " well brought up 
in the learning and knowledge of God," so that "they would not, 
when they came to age, so much give themselves to other 
vanities." 

THE SCHOOL OF MORE. 

Among the most eminent men of this remarkable period was 
Sir Thomas More, the records of whose early life and private 
history throw considerable light upon the state of education in 
his time. The interesting traits of More's boyhood — his school- 
days at St. Anthony's in Threadneedle-street (one of the four 
grammar-schools founded by Henry YI.) ; his removal into the 
household of Cardinal Morton ; and his college days at Oxford ; 
will be found sketched elsewhere in this volume. We here fol- 
low More into his domestic retirement at Chelsea. 

More hath built near London (says Erasmus), upon the Thames, such a commodious 
house, and is neither mean, nor subject to envy, yet magnificent enough. There he con- 
verseth affably with his family, his wife, his son and daughter, his three daughters and 

their husbands ; with eleven grand-children You would say that there were ia 

that place Plato's academj' ; but I do the house injury in comparing it to Plato's academy, 
wherein were only disputations of numbers and geometrical figures, and sometimes of moral 
virtues. I would rather call his house a school or university of Christian religion ; for 
there is none therein but readeth or studieth the liberal sciences ; their special care is piety 
and virtue ; there is no quarreling or intemperate words heard ; none seem idle ; which 
household discipline that worthy gentleman doth not govern by proud and lofty words, but 
with all kind and courteous benevolence. Everybody performeth his duty, yet is there al- 
ways alacrity, neither is sober mirth anything wanting. 

In the intervals of business, the education of his children 
formed More's greatest pleasure. His opinions respecting female 
education differed very widely from what the comparative rude- 
ness of the age might have led us to expect. By nothing, he 
justly thought, is female virtue so much endangered as by idle- 
ness, and the fancied necessity of amusement ; and against these 
is there any safeguard so effectual as an attachment to literature ? 
Some security is indeed afforded by a diligent application to va- 
rious sorts of female employments ; yet these, while they employ 
the hands, give only partial occupation to the mind. But well- 
chosen books at once engage the thoughts, refine the taste, 
strengthen the understanding, and confirm the morals. Female 
virtue, informed by the knowledge which they impart, is placed 
on the most secure foundations, while all the milder aflTections of 
the heart, partaking in the improvement of the taste and fancy, 
are refined and matured. More was no convert to the notion, 
that the possession of knowledge renders women less pliant ; 
nothing, in his opinion, was so untractable as ignorance. Al- 
though to manage with skill the feeding and clothing of a family 
is an essential portion in the duties of a wife and a mother, yet 



Progress of Education. 63 

to secure the affections of a husband, he judged it no less indis- 
pensable to possess the qualities of an intelligent and agreeable 
companion. Nor ought a husband, if he regards his own happi- 
ness, neglect to endeavor to remove the casual defects of female 
education. Never can he hope to be so truly beloved, esteemed, 
and respected, as when the wife confides in him as her friend, 
and looks up to him as her instructor. Such were the opinions, 
with regard to female education, which More maintained in dis- 
course, and supported by practice. His daughters, rendered pro- 
ficients in music, and other elegant accomplishments proper for 
their sex, were also instructed in Latin, in which language they 
read, wrote and conversed with the facility and correctness of 
their father. The results of this assiduous attention soon became 
conspicuous, and the School of More ^ as it was termed, attracted 
general admiration. In the meantime the stepmother of the 
daughters, a notable economist, by distributing tasks, of which 
she required a punctual performance, took care that they should 
not remain unacquainted with female works, and with the manage- 
ment of a family. For all these employments, which together ap- 
pear so far beyond the ordinary industry of women, their time 
was found sufficient, because no part of it was wasted in idleness 
or trifling amusements. If any of More's servants discovered 
a taste for reading, or an ear for music, he allowed them to 
cultivate their favorite pursuit. To preclude all improper con- 
versation before children and servants at table, a domestic was 
accustomed to read aloud certain passages, so selected as to 
amuse for the time, and to afford matter for much entertaining 
conversation. 

Margaret Roper, the first-born of More's children, was as cel- 
ebrated for her learning as beloved for her tender affection to 
her father in his hour of suffering. Erasmus called her the or- 
nament of Britain, and the fiower of the learned matrons of Eng- 
land, at a time when education consisted only of the revived 
study of ancient learning. She composed a touching account of 
the last hours of her father. 

With a few words upon Sir Thomas More's views on Public 
Education we conclude. That he conceived the education of all 
classes to be most conducive to happiness, is evident from the 
following passage in his Utopia, professedly written to describe 
" the best state of a public weal," or in more familiar words, a 
sort of model nation. More says : " though there be not many 
in every city which be exempt and discharged of all other labors, 
and appointed only to learning — that is to say, such in whom, 
even from their very childhood, they have perceived a singular 
towardness, a fine wit, and a mind apt to good learning — yet all 



64 School-Days of Eminent Men, 

in their childhood he instructed in learning. And the better part 
of the people, both men and women, throughout all their whole 
life do bestow in learning those spare hours which we said they 
have vacant from their bodily labors.'^ This was written nearly 
three centuries and a half since ; the people of England have not 
yet reached this condition, although they are tending toward it 
by efforts at affording elementary instruction for all children, and 
inducing the habit of self-culture in all adults. 

WOLSEY, LATIMER, AND CRANMER. 

The boyhood of three great men of this period shows the means 
of education then obtainable by the middle classes. Wolsey, 
who was the son of " an honest poor man," not a butcher's son, 
as commonly supposed,* was sent when a boy to the Free Gram- 
mar-school at Ipswich ; thence he was removed to Magdalene 
College, Oxford, and was subsequently appointed master of a 
grammar-school dependent on that college. Part of his ill-ac- 
quired wealth, Wolsey, late in life, expended in the advancement 
of learning. At Oxford, he founded the college of Christchurch ; 
but before his magnificent design was completed, Wolsey had lost 
the favor of his sovereign, and the King having, immediately on the 
Cardinal's fall, taken possession of the revenues intended for the 
support of the college, the design had well nigh fallen to the ground ; 
when Wolsey, in the midst of all his troubles, among his last pe- 
titions to the King, urgently requested that " His Majesty would 
suffer his college at Oxford to go on." This the King did, but 
transferred the credit of the measure to himself. Meanwhile, 
Wolsey had founded at Ipswich, in 1527, a school, as a nursery 
for his intended college at Oxford ; and this school is said for 
a time to have rivaled the colleges of Eton and Winchester. 

Hugh Latimer, the son of a Leicestershire farmer, born in 
or about 1472, was first sent to a grammar-school, and afterward 
to Cambridge. Of his family circumstances, Latimer has left 
us this interesting record : " My father," he writes, " was a yeo- 
man, and had no lands of his own ; only he had a farm of three 
or four pounds by the year at the uttermost, and hereupon he 
tilled so much as kept half-a-dozen men. He had walk for a 
hundred sheep, and my mother milked thirty kine. He was 
able, and did find the king a harness with himself and his horse. 
I remember that I buckled on his harness when he went to 

* Wolsey was not born in Ipswich, as generally stated ; but at Long Melford, near Ips- 
wich. (See Curiosities of History, p. 225.) He is said to have written the preface to 
" Lilly's Grammar ;•' but this is doubtful. In this preface the truest principles of tuition 
are ably laid down ; and he necessity of making a scholar learn thoroughly what he is 
taught step by step is fully stated and enforced. 



Progress of Education, 65 

Blackheath field. He kept me to school, or else I had not been 
able to have 'preached before the king's majesty now. He married 
my sisters with five pounds, or twenty nobles, each, having 
brought them up in godliness and fear of God. He kept hos- 
pitality for his poor neighbors, and some alms he gave to the 
poor ; and all this he did of the said farm." 

Thomas Cranmer was born at Aslacton, Notts, in 1489, of 
a family who had been settled in that county for some genera- 
tions. His first instruction was received from the parish-clerk, 
at the village school, from which he was removed by his mother, 
now become a widow, who placed him in 1503 at Jesus Col- 
lege, Cambridge, amongst " the better sort of students," where 
Greek, Hebrew, and theology were the principal objects of his 
industry. 

BOYHOOD AND LEARNING OF KING EDWARD THE SIXTH. 

The most munificent patron of education who ever sat upon 
the British throne was Edward YI., the only son of Henry VIII. 
who survived him. He was born at Hampton Court in 1537, on 
the 12th of October, which being the vigil of St. Edward, he 
received his Christian appellation in commemoration of the can- 
onized king. His mother, Queen Jane Seymour, died on the 
twelfth day after giving him birth. The child had three step- 
mothers in succession after this ; but he was probably not much 
an object of attention with either of them. Sir John Hay ward, 
who has written the history of his life and reign with great full- 
ness, says that '' he was brought up among nurses until he ar- 
rived at the age of six years. He was then committed to the 
care of Dr. (afterward Sir Anthony) Cook, and Mr. (afterward 
Sir John) Cheke, the former of whom appears to have undertaken 
the prince's instruction in philosophy and divinity, the latter in 
Greek and Latin." He succeeded to the throne when little more 
than nine years of age. The conduct of the young prince toward 
his instructors was uniformly courteous ; and his generous dispo- 
sition won for him the highest esteem. In common with the 
children of the rich and great, he was from his cradle surrounded 
with means of amusement. It is related that at the age of five 
years, a splendid present was made to him by his godfather, 
Archbishop Cranmer ; the gift was a costly service of silver, con- 
sisting of dishes, plates, spoons, etc. The child was overjoyed 
with the present, when the prince's valet, seeking to impress on 
his mind its value, observed : " Your highness will be pleased to 
remember that although this beautiful present is youri, it must 
be kept entirely to yourself; for if others are permitted to touch 
5 



QQ School-Days of Eminent Men. 

it, it will be entirely spoiled/' " My good Hinbrook," replied 
the prince mildly, " if no one can touch these valuables without 
spoiling them, how do you then suppose they would ever have 
been given to me ?" Next day, Edward invited a party of young 
friends to a feast, which was served upon the present of plate ; 
and upon the departure of the young guests, he gave to each of 
them an article of the service, as a mark of regard. 

Cranmer, to encourage Edward in his studies, was in the habit 
of corresponding with him once a week, and requiring of him an 
account of what he had done during that time. The prince also 
compHed with the request of his venerable godfather, by keeping 
a journal, for which purpose he divided a sheet of paper into five 
columns, and under that arrangement recorded his progress in 
mythology, history, geography, mathematics, and philosophy. 

At the age of fifteen, Edward is said to have possessed a critical 
knowledge of the Greek and Latin languages ; and to have con- 
versed fluently in French, Spanish, and Italian. A manuscript 
is still preserved in the British Museum, containing a collection 
of his exercises in Greek and Latin ; several of his letters, in 
French and Latin, written with singular accuracy of diction, are 
also extant ; as well as a French tract, composed before he was 
twelve years old, against the abuses of Popery. In the Ash- 
molean and Cotto'nian collections are other papers in his hand- 
writing ; some of which relate to state affairs, and evince an in- 
timate knowlege of the domestic and foreign policy of his gov- 
ernment, and his anxious concern for the welfare of his people. 
But the most striking of his existing productions are " King Ed- 
ward the Sixth's own Arguments against the Pope's Supremacy ;" 
and "A Translation into French of several passages of Scrip- 
ture, which forbid idolatry, or the worshipping of false gods." 
There are also some "Metrical Stanzas on the Eucharist," which 
Fox has printed in his Martyrology, and characterizes as highly 
creditable to the young prince ; and when to his other accom- 
plishments it is added that he was well versed in natural philos- 
ophy, astronomy, and logic, his acquirements will be allowed to 
have been extraordinary. " This child," says Garden, the cele- 
brated physician, who had frequently conversed with Edward, 
" was so bred, had such parts, was of such expectation, that he 
looked like a miracle of a man ; and in him was such an attempt 
of Nature, that not only England, but the world, had reason to 
lament his being so early snatched away." 

In a register kept for the purpose, Edward noted down the 
characters of public men ; and all the important events of his 
reign, together with the proceedings in council, were recorded 
in a private journal, which he never allowed to pass out of his 



Progress of JEducation, 67 

possession. The original of this Journal * still remains ; and a 
soundness of judgment is displayed in the various entries, and 
the reflections with which they are accompanied, far beyond Ed- 
ward's years. " It gave hopes," said Lord Orford, *' of his prov- 
ing a good king, as in so green an age he seemed resolved to be 
acquainted with his subjects and his kingdom." He was quite 
familiar with the value of money, and the principles of finance ; 
and the mercantile and military affairs of the country. He was 
inflexibly just both in public and private ; and his attention to his 
social duties was no less remarkable than his strict discharge of 
the regal functions. In disposition he was meek, affable, and 
benevolent ; dignified, yet courteous in conversation ; and sincere 
and disinterested in his friendship. " If ye knew the towardness 
of that young prince," observes one that was about his person, 
" your hearts would melt to hear him named ; the beautifullest 
creature that liveth under the sun, the wittiest, the most amiable, 
and the gentlest thing of all the world." His compassion for 
the poor and the distressed was enlarged, yet unostentatious ; 
and the distribution of his charities was rendered doubly valua- 
ble by the promptitude and considerate delicacy with which they 
were conferred. 

Perhaps, however, the most prominent features in the charac- 
ter of the young king were his sincere piety and zeal in the cause 
of religion. He showed this strength of feeling even in his in- 
fancy. One of his companions having stepped upon a large Bible 
for the purpose of obtaining a toy which was out of his reach, he 
rebuked him severely for so doing, and left the play in which 
they were engaged. At his coronation, when the swords of the 
three kingdoms were carried before him, he observed that one 
was still wanting, and called for the Bible. " That^^ said he, 
" is the sword of the Spirit, and ought in all right to govern us, 
who use them for the people's safety, by God's appointment. 
AYithout that sword we can do nothing : from that, we are what 
we are this day. Under that we ought to live, to fight, to gov- 
ern the people, and to perform all our affairs. From that alone 
we obtain all power, virtue, grace, salvation, and whatever we 
have of divine strength." Such indeed was Edward's regard for 
religion, and for everything connected with it, that it was usual to 
compare him to Josiah ; and he had also acquired the character- 
istic appellation of " Edward the Saint." It was his custom to 
take notes of the sermons which he heard ; particularly of those 
which seemed to bear any immediate relation to his own duties 

* This is preserved, with some other Remains of the young King in the British Museum, 
and printed, though imperfectly, in the collection of Records, forming vol. ii. part ii., of 
Burnet's History of the Reformation. 



68 School-Days of Eminent Men, 

and difficulties ; and the attention which he paid to the precepts 
inculcated in the discourses of the eminent divines who preached 
before him, frequently produced a visible and permanent effect 
upon his conduct, as will be seen presently. 

EDWARD VI. FOUNDS CHRIST's HOSPITAL. 

Few events in the history of Chrisiian benevolence are so 
minutely recorded as the foundation of this the noblest institution 
in the world. At the same time, Edward founded St. Thomas's 
and Bridewell Hospitals ; the three foundations forming part of 
a comprehensive scene of charity, resulting from a sermon 
preached before the King by the pious Bishop Ridley, at West- 
minster, in 1552. The Bishop, discoursing on the excellence of 
charity, " made a fruitful and goodly exhortation to the rich to 
be merciful unto the poor, and also to move such as were in 
authority, to travail by some charitable ways and means, to com- 
fort and relieve them." Edward's heart was touched by the 
earnestness of the appeal, and " understanding that a great num- 
ber of poor people did swarm in this realm, and chiefly in the 
city of London, and that no good order was taken of them," he 
sent the Bishop a message when the sermon was ended desiring 
him not to depart till he had spoken with him. As soon as he 
was at leisure, he took him aside into a private gallery, where 
he made him sit down and be covered ; and giving him hearty 
thanks for his sermon, entered into conversation on several 
points, which, according to his usual practice, he had noted down 
for special consideration. Of this interview, the venerable Rid- 
ley remarked : " Truly, truly, I could never have thought that 
excellency to have been in his grace, but that I beheld and heard 
it in him." 

Adverting, at length, to the Bishop's exhortation in behalf of 
the poor, Edward greatly commended it, and it had evidently 
made a powerful impression upon his mind. He then acknowl- 
edged the application of Ridley's exhortation to himself, and 
prayed the Bishop to say his mind as to what ways were best to be 
taken. Ridley hesitated for a moment to reply. At length, he 
observed that the city of London, as well on account of the ex- 
treme poverty which prevailed there on the one hand, and of the 
wise and charitable disposition of its more wealthy inhabitants on 
the other, would afford a favorable opening for the exercise of 
the royal bounty ; and advised that letters should be forthwith 
directed to the Lord Mayor, requiring him, with such assistants 
as he might think meet, to consult upon the matter. Edward 
wrote the letter upon the instant, and charged Ridley to deliver 
it hknself ; and his delight was manifested in the zeal with which 



Progress of Education. 69 

he undertook the commission, for the King's letter and message 
were delivered on the same evening. On the following day 
Ridley dined with the Lord Mayor, who, with two Aldermen and 
six Commoners, took the King's proposal into consideration ; 
other counselors were added, and at length the plan recommended 
to his Majesty was to provide Christ's Hospital for the education 
of poor children ; St. Thomas's, for the relief of the sick and dis- 
eased ; and Bridewell, for the correction and amendment of the 
idle and the vagabond. 

For Christ's Hospital was granted the monastery of the Grey 
Friars ; the King also presenting the foundation with a consid- 
erable stock of linen, which the commissioners, who had lately 
been appointed to inspect the churches in and about the metrop- 
olis, had deemed superfluous for the performance of divine ser- 
vice, as celebrated since the Reformation. For the second hos- 
pital, an almonry was fitted up ; and for the third hospital, Ed- 
ward granted his royal palace of Bridewell. He then bestowed 
certain lands for the support of these foundations ; and having 
signed the instrument, ejaculated in the hearing of his Council — 
" Lord, I yield thee most hearty thanks, that thou hast given me 
life this long, to finish this work to the glory of thy name." 

A large picture (attributed to Holbei" ), which hangs in the Great Hall of Christ's Hos- 
pital, portrays this interesting scene. The young monarch sits on an elevated throne, in a 
scarlet and ermined robe, holding the sceptre in his left hand, and presenting with the 
other the Charter to the kneeling Lord Mayor. Bj' his side stand."* the Chancellor holding 
the seals, and next to him are other officers of State. Bishop Ridley kneels before hina 
with uplifted hands, as if supplicating a blessing on the event ; whilst the Aldermen, etc., 
with the Lord Mayor, kneel on both sides, occupying the middle ground of the picture , and 
lastly, in front, are a double row of boys on one side, and girls on the other, from the 
master and matron down to the boy and girl who have stepped forward from their I'espec- 
tive rows, and kneel with raised hands before the King. 

Edward lived about a month after signing the Charter of In- 
corporation of the Royal Hospitals : in the spring of 1552 he had 
been seized with the small-pox, when he had scarcely re- 
covered from the measles ; a consumptive cough came on ; his 
medical advisers were dismissed, and his cure intrusted to the 
ignorant empiricisms of an old nurse ; this disorder was greatly 
aggravated, and he died in the arms of Sir Henry Sidney, on the 
Gth July, 1553, in the sixteenth year of his age, praying God to 
receive his spirit, and to defend the realm from papistry. 

The old Grey Friars buildings adjoining Newgate-street were 
now repaired by aid of the citizens' benefactions, and in Novem- 
ber, 1552, there were admitted 340 "poore fatherlesse children" 
within the ancient monastery walls* " On Christmas-day," says 
Stow, "while the Lord Maior and Aldermen rode to Paul's, the 
children of Christ's Hospitall stood from St. Lawrence-lane end 
in Cheape towards Paul's, all in one livery of russet cotton, 340 



70 School-Days of Eminent Men* 

in number ; and at Easter next they were in Uue, at the Spittle, 
and so have continued ever since." Hence the popular name of 
the Hospital, "the Blue-Coat School." 

Since this period, the income of the institution has known 
much fluctuation; and, consequently, the number of inmates. 
The 340 children with which the Hospital opened had dwindled 
in 1580 to 150. The object of the institution has also, in the 
lapse of time, become materially changed, which may in a great 
measure be attributed to the influence of the Governors, or bene- 
factors, its chief supporters. 

The Hospital, with the church of the monastery, was destroyed 
by the Great Fire, but was soon rebuilt. Later was added the 
Mathematical School, founded by Charles II., in 1672, for 40 
boys, to be instructed in navigation ; they are called " King's 
Boys," and wear a badge on the right shoulder; and there was 
subsequently added, by the legacy of a Governor, a subordinate 
Mathematical School of 12 boys ("The Twelves"), who wear 
a badge on the left shoulder ; and, lastly, to these have been 
added "The Twos." 

This was the first considerable extension of the system of edu- 
cation at the Hospital, which originally consisted of a grammar- 
school for boys, and a separate school for girls ; the latter being 
taught to read, sew, and mark. A book is preserved containing 
the records of the Hospital from its foundation, and the anthem 
sung by the first children. 

Of the school buildings, there remains the Writing School, a 
large edifice built by Sir Christopher Wren, in 1694, at the ex- 
pense of Sir John Moore, of whom a marble statue is placed 
in the facade. Of the ancient Friary — portions of the cloisters 
only remain. The great Dining Hall was commenced in 1825, 
and is built partly on the ancient wall of London, and partly on 
the foundation of the refectory of the monastery. It is a vast 
edifice in the Tudor style, by Shaw, the principal front facing 
Newgate-street, with the inclosed play-ground ; the Hall, with its 
lobby and organ gallery, is 178 feet long; it is lit by nine large 
windows, and is, next to Westminster Hall, the noblest room in 
the metropolis. Here, besides the large Charter picture already 
described, is a painting by Yerrio, of James II. on his throne, 
receiving " the Mathematical Boys," in the same form as at their 
annual presentation to this day ; though in Verrio's picture are 
girls as well as boys. 

In this Hall are held the " Suppings in Public," on the seven Sunday evenings preceding 
Easter Sunday, and on that evening, to which visitors are admitted by tickets. The tables 
are laid with cheese in wooden bowls ; beer in wooden piggins, poured from leathern jacks ; 
and bread brought in huge baskets. The official company then enter, the Lord Mayor or 
Prasident taking his seat in a chair made of oak from old St. Katherine's Church ; a hymn 



Progress of Education. 71 

is sung, accompanied by the organ ; a Grecian reads the evening service from the pulpit 
silence being enforced by three strokes of a hammer. After prayers, the meal commences, 
the visitors walking between the tables At its close, the " trade boys" take up the pig- 
gins and jacks, baskets, bowls, and candlesticks, and pass in procession before the authori- 
ties, bowing to them ; the entire 800 boys thus passing out. 

The Spital (or Hospital) Sermons are preached in Chxistchurch, Newgate-street, on Easter 
Monday and Tuesday. On Monday, the children proceed to the Mansion House, and re- 
turn in procession to Christchurch with the Lord Mayor and City authorities to hear the 
sermon. On Tuesday, the children asain go to the Mansion House, and pass through the 
Egyptian Hall before the Lord Mayor, each boy receiving a glass of wine, two buns, and a 
shilling ; the monitors half-a-crown each, and the Grecians a guinea. They then return to 
Christchurch, as on Monday . 

At the first Drawing-room of the year, forty " Mathematical 
Boys" are presented to the Sovereign, who gives them 8/. 8s. as 
a gratuity. To this, other members of the Royal Family for- 
merly added smaller sums, and the whole was divided among 
the ten boys who left the school in the year. On the illness of 
King George III. these presentations were discontinued ; but 
the Governors of the Hospital continued to pay 11. 3s., the 
amount ordinarily received by each, to every boy on quitting. 
The practice of receiving the children was revived by William 
IV. 

Each of the " Mathematical Boys" having passed his Trinity- 
House examination, and received testimonials of his good con- 
duct, is presented with a watch, worth from 9/. to 13/., in addi- 
tion to an outfit of clothes, books, mathematical instruments, a 
Gunter's scale, a quadrant, and sea-chest. On St. Matthew's 
Day (Sept. 21), "the Grecians" deliver orations, this being a 
relic of the scholars' disputations in the cloisters. 

The dress of the Blue-Coat Boys is the costume of the citi- 
zens of London at the time of the foundation of the Hospital, 
when blue coats were the common habit of the apprentices and 
serving-men, and yellow stockings were generally worn. This 
dress is the nearest approach to the monkish costume now worn ; 
the dark-blue coat, with a closely-fitting body and loose sleeves, 
being the ancient tunic, and the under-coat, or "yellow," the sleeve- 
less under-tunic of the monastery. The red leathern girdle cor- 
responds to the hempen cord of the friar. Yellow worsted stock- 
ings, a flat black woolen cap (scarcely larger than a saucer), and 
a clerical neckband, complete the dress. 

The education of the boys consists of reading, writing, and arithmetic, French, the clas- 
sics, and the mathematics. There are sixteen Exhibitions for scholars at the Universities 
of Oxford and Cauibridge, etc. There are also separate trusts held by the Governors of 
the Hospital, which are distributed to poor widows, to the blind, and in apprenticing boys, 
etc. The annual income of the Hospital is about 50,000^. ; its ordinary disbursements 
48,000/. 

Among the eminent Blues are Leigh Hunt ; Thomas Barnes, 
many years editor of the Times newspaper ; Thomas Mitchell, 
the translator of Aristophanes ; S. T. Coleridge, the poet, and 



72 School-Days of Eminent 3Ien, 

Charles Lamb, his cotemporary ; ISIiddleton, Bishop of Cal- 
cutta ; Jeremiah Markland, the best scholar and critic of the 
last century ; Samuel Richardson, the novelist ; Joshua Barnes, 
the scholiast ; Bishop Stillingfleet ; Camden, " the nourrice of 
antiquitie ; " and Campion, the learned Jesuit of the age of Eliz- 
abeth. Coleridge, Charles Lamb, and Leigh Hunt have pub- 
lished, many interesting reminiscences of their cotemporaries 
in the school. 

The subordinate establishment is at Hertford, to which the younger boys are sent pre 
paratory to their entering on the foundation in London. At Hertford there is likewise 
accommodation for 80 girls. 

Besides the Lord Mayor, Court of Aldermen, and twelve members of the Common 
Council, who are Governors ex nfficio^ there are between 400 and 500 other Governors, at 
the head of whom are the Queen and Prince Albert, with the Prince of Wales and Prince 
Alfred. The Duke of Cambridge is President. The qualification for Governor is a dona- 
tion of 500/. ; an Alderman may nominate a Governor for election at half-price. There are 
from 1400 to 1500 children on the foundation, including those at the branch establishment 
at Hertford. About 200 boys are admitted annually (at the age of from seven to ten years), 
by presentations of the Governors; the Queen, the Lord Mayor (two presentations), and 
the Court of Aldermen, presenting annually, and the other Governors in rotation, so that 
the privilege occurs about once in three or four years. A list of the Governors having 
presentation.* is published annually in March, and is to be had at the counting-house 
of the Hospital. " Grecians " and " King's Boys " remain in the school after they are fif- 
teen years old ; but the other boys leave at that age. 

KING Edward's schools at Birmingham, lichfield, 

TUNBRIDGE, AND BEDFORD. 

We have seen in the foregoing narrative that Endowments for 
Education are, probably, nearly as old as endowments for the 
support of the church. The monasteries had schools attached 
to them in many instances. Still, it must often have happened 
(thickly scattered though the monasteries were) that the child 
lived at an inconvenient distance from any one of them, and, 
probably, little was learned there after all. Before the Refor- 
mation, schools were also connected with chantries, and it was 
the duty of the priest to teach the children grammar and sing- 
ing. Of this connection between schools and religious founda- 
tions, the keeping of them in the church, or in a building which 
was part of it, is an indication. {See page 38.) There are 
many schools still in existence which were founded before the 
Reformation, but a very great number was founded immediately 
after that event ; and one object of Edward VL in dissolving 
the chantries and other religious foundations then existing, was 
for the purpose of establishing Grammar Schools. But Strype 
assures us that the law for this purpose was grossly abused ; for 
" though the public good w^as intended, yet private men had most 
of the benefit, and the king and the commonwealth, the state of 
learning and the condition of the poor, were left as they were 
before, or worse." King Edward's Schools were founded out of 
tithes that formerly belonged to religious houses or chantry lands ; 



Progress of Education. 73 

and many of these schools, owing to the improved value of their 
property, are now among the richest foundations of the kind in 
England. There is no doubt, it should be added, that the desire 
to give complete ascendancy to the doctrines of the Reformed 
Church weighed strongly with the founders of these schools; and 
the clergy were enjoined by proclamation " to exhort the people 
to teach their children the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, and the Ten 
Commandments in English ; " the service of the church having 
been previously performed in Latin. 

" The King's School " at Sherborne is said to have been the 
first of King Edward's foundation, in all probability owing this 
rank to the Protector Somerset, who at that time held the estates 
of Sherborne Castle. The school premises, which are a fine 
specimen of olden architecture, were arranged by Bishop Jewel; 
and the foundation takes a high position among the leading 
schools of England. 

Birmingham Free Grammar School is one of the richest 
foundations of the kind, Edward having endowed it with the 
property of suppressed religious houses. The Guild of the Holy 
Cross yielded it lands of the yearly value of 21/.; and the Gov- 
ernors were to nominate and appoint "a pedagogue and sub-ped- 
agogue," with statutes and ordinances for the government of the 
school, " for the instruction of boys and youths in the learned 
languages." The value of the endowment had increased, in 1829, 
to upward of 3000/. a-year; and, in 1831, the Governors were 
empowered by law to build a new school for teaching modern 
languages, the arts and sciences ; besides eight other schools for 
the elementary education of the poorer inhabitants of the town. 
The endo\ved income of this noble foundation is now 8000/. ; it 
has ten university exhibitions ; and the number of scholars in the 
Grammar School is nearly 500. The school-house is a hand- 
some stone structure, in the Tudor style ; designed by Barry, the 
architect of the new Houses of Parliament. 

Lichfield Free Grammar School was also founded in this reign. 
Here were educated Elias Ashmole, the antiquary; Gregory 
King, the herald; George Smalridge, Bishop of Bristol; Dr. 
WoUaston, author of the Religion of Nature ; Addison, who 
was the son of a Dean of Lichfield ; Lord Chief-Justices Willes 
and Wilmot; Lord Chief Baron Parker; Judges Noel and 
Lloyd; Dr. Samuel Johnson, who was born at Lichfield; David 
Garrick ; and Henry Salt, the traveler in Abyssinia. As early 
as the reign of Henry IIL, the bishop of the diocese founded a 
religious establishment, but it subsequently went under the name 
of "The Hospital School;" in 1740 it merged into the Gram- 
mar School. 



74 School-Days of Eminent 3Ien. 

Tunbridge School, in Kent, is another of our richly-endowed 
grammar-schools, the benefits of which have been vastly extend- 
ed. This school was founded by Sir Andrew Judd, Knight, a 
native of the town of Tunbridge. He acquired a large fortune 
in London by trade in furs, and he served as Lord Mayor in 
1550, when, says Holinshed, "he erected one notable Free School 
at Tunbridge, in Kent, wherein he brought up and nourished in 
learning grite store of youth, as well bred in that shire as brought 
up in other counties adjoining. A noble act, and corresponding 
to others that have been done by like worshipful men, and others 
in old time, in the same cittie of London." Sir Andrew Judd ob- 
tained a charter from Edward YL, in 1553, which empowered 
him to buy land within a limited sum for the endowment of his 
school. After his death, this property was conveyed to the 
Skinners' Company for the same uses ; Sir Andrew, by his will, 
executed in 1558, devising to the Company certain lands and 
houses " for the perpetual maintenance of the school that ha had 
erected at Tunbridge." Judd Place, east and west, Tunbridge 
Place, Burton Crescent, Mabledon Place, Judd, Bidborough, 
Hadlow, Speldhurst and Leigh Streets, in London, and others in 
Pancras parish, are situated on this property. There is also 
property in Gracechurch Street, Cornhill, Bishopsgate, and other 
places in the city of London. 

For a long time the produce of these estates was little more 
than sufficient to defray all the expenses with which the school 
had been charged by the founder; until the building leases 
granted on the property in Pancras parish, and the improvement 
in Leadenhall market, raised the revenues to some thousands per 
annum ; and at the expiration of all the present leases, it is stated 
that the endowment of Tunbridge School will be the most val- 
uable in the kingdom. In this school, all whose parents live 
within ten miles, in Kent, are foundationers ; there are several 
exhibitions, a fellowship at St. John's College, Oxford, etc. The 
instruction is according to the doctrines of the Church of Eng- 
land ; whereas, at the Birmingham School a boy may be ex- 
cused all examination " in the fundamental principles and doc- 
trines of the Christian religion," though examiners are appointed 
for this purpose.* 

The Grammar School of the Bedford Charity is likewise of 
King Edward's foundation, in 1552. There is, perhaps, no Eng- 
lish town of similar extent equal to Bedford in the variety and 
magnitude of its charitable and educational establishments. But 

* This is a very singular proTision to introduce among the rules of one of King Edward's 
foundations, and its effect is to destroy one of the chief objects which the King had in 
view in establishing these schools. — On Grammar Schools, by George Long. 



Progress of Education. 75 

the principal benefactor was Sir William Harpur, alderman of 
London, who endowed the above free-school for the instruction 
of the children of the town " in grammar and good manners ; " 
conveying to the corporation 13 acres of land in the parish of 
St. Andrew, Holborn, for the support of the school, and for por- 
tioning poor maidens of the town ; the overplus, if any, to be 
given in alms to the poor. There have been built upon the land 
Lamb's Conduit Street, Harpur Street, Theobald's Road, Bed- 
ford Street, Bedford Row, New North Street, and some smaller 
streets ; and thus the property has gradually risen in value from 
below 150/ a-year, a quarter of a century since, to upward of 
13,500/. ! The income of the Grammar School is under 3000/. 
a-year; there are about 160 scholars, and 8 exhibitions. The 
Warden and Fellows of New College, Oxford, are the visitors. 

KEIGN OF QUEEN MARY. 

King Edward's aids to education were cut short by his early 
death. His successor. Queen Mary, was brought up from her 
infancy to the Roman Catholic religion ; and during her brief 
reign, she was too much occupied with the sanguinary persecu- 
tions of the adherents to the Reformed doctrines, to attend to the 
business of public education ; little is recorded of her girlhood, 
though she is said to have possessed a share of the distinguished 
vigor and ability of her family. 

Mary, the only child of Henry VIIL and Katherine of Arra- 
gon who survived her parents, was born at Greenwich, in 1516. 
She was brought up from infancy under the care of her mother, 
and Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, the effect of whose 
instructions was not impaired by the subsequent lessons of the 
learned Ludovicus Vives, who, though somewhat inclined to the 
English religion, was appointed by Henry to be her Latin tutor. 
In her tenth year a separate establishment was formed for her, 
and she was sent to reside at Ludlow, with a household of 300 
persons, and with the Lady Salisbury for her governess. The time 
she passed there was probably the happiest of her days, for her 
life was early embittered by the controversy regarding her pa- 
rents' marriage. Mary was brought up in a profound venera- 
tion for the see of Rome, by her mother, with whom she natu- 
rally sided ; and thus she gave deep offense to her imperious 
father. Entries in her Privy Purse Account from 1536 to 1544, 
published by Sir Frederic Madden, show Mary's active benevo- 
lence toward the poor, compassion for prisoners, friendly re- 
gard and liberality to her servants ; and also indicate elegant pur- 
suits and domestic virtues, for which in general she does not 
receive credit. 



76 Scliool-Bays of Eminent Men. 



EDUCATION OF QUEEN ELIZABETH. 

Elizabeth, the only surviving child of Henry VIII. by Anne 
Boleyn, was born at Greenwich, in 1533. She is considered by 
Ascham, one of her teachers, as having attained the lead of the 
lettered ladies of England at this period. Camden describes her 
as "of a modest gravity, excellent wit, royal soul, happy mem- 
ory, and indefatigably given to the study of learning ; insomuch 
as before she was seventeen years of age she well understood the 
Latin, French, and Italian tongues, and had an indifferent knowl- 
edge of the Greek. Neither did she neglect music, so far as it 
became a princess, being able to sing sweetly, and play handsome- 
ly on the lute. With Roger Ascham, who was her tutor, she 
read over Melancthon's Common Places, all Tully, a great part 
of the histories of Titus Livius, certain select orations of Iso- 
crates (whereof two she turned into Latin), Sophocles' Trage- 
dies, and the New Testament in Greek, by which means she 
framed her tongue to a pure and elegant way of speaking," etc. 
Ascham tells us in his Schoolmaster, that Elizabeth continued her 
Greek studies subsequent to her accession to the throne. "After 
dinner" (at Windsor Castle, 10th December, 1563), he says, "I 
went up to read with the Queen's Majestic : we read there to- 
gether in the Greek tongue, as I well remember, that noble ora- 
tion of Demosthenes against -^schines for his false dealing in his 
embassage to Philip of Macedonia." Elizabeth was for some 
time imprisoned by her sister, Queen Mary, at Woodstock. A 
New Testament is still preserved, which bears the initials of the 
captive princess, in her own beautiful handwriting, with the fol- 
lowing mixed allusion to her religious consolations and solitary 
life : " I walk many times into pleasant fields of Holy Scriptures, 
where I pluck up goodly sentences by pruning, eat them by read- 
ing, chew them by musing, and lay them up at length in the high 
seat of memory ; that, having tasted their sweetness, I may the 
less perceive the bitterness of this miserable life." 

Of Elizabeth's compositions (a few of which are in verse), 
her speeches to the parliament afford evidence of superior abili- 
ty. She, like her royal predecessor. King Alfred, completed an 
English translation of Bcethius's Consolations of Philosophy, 
which translation, partly in her Majesty's handwriting, and part- 
ly in that of her Secretary, v;as discovered about the year 1830, 
in the State Paper Office. 

Mary, Queen of Scots, merits mention among the learned 
women of this age. She was sent by her mother, in her fifth 
year, to a convent in France, where she made such rapid progress 
in the literature and accomplishments of the time, that when vis- 



Progress of Education. 77 

iting her in 1550, her mother, Marj of Guise, with her Scottish 
attendants, burst into tears of joy. Upon her removal to the 
French court, Mary became the envy of her sex, surpassing the 
most accomplished in the elegance and fluency of her language, 
the grace and loveliness of her movements, and the charm of 
her whole manner and behavior. She wrote with elegance in 
the Latin and French languages ; and many of her compositions 
have been preserved, consisting of poems, letters, and a discourse 
of royal advice to her son. Like Queen Elizabeth, she greatly 
excelled in music, especially on the virginal, an instrument in 
use among our ancestors prior to the invention of the spinnet 
and harpsichord: many compositions which were written for 
Elizabeth, are known in the musical world at the present day ; 
and the identical virginal upon which the queen played is in ex- 
istence in Worcestershire. 

ROGER ASCHAM HIS "SCHOOLMASTER." 

One of the most remarkable men of this period was Roger 
Ascham, who attained such proficiency in Greek, that, when a 
boy, he read lectures in it to other boys who were desirous of in- 
struction ; he also learned to play on musical instruments, and 
was one of the few who then excelled in the mechanical art of 
writing. He took the degree of M.A. at St. John's College, 
Cambridge ; he commenced tutor when 20 years of age, and was 
one of those who restored the pronunciation of Greek to our 
own modern mode of utterance. His favorite amusement was 
archery, upon which he wrote a treatise, entitled Toxophilus, in 
1544, which he dedicated to King Henry VIIL, who rewarded 
him with a pension of 10/. a-year. He taught the Lady Eliza- 
beth to write a fair hand, and for two years he instructed her in 
the learned languao^es : he informs us that Elizabeth understood 
Greek better than the clergy of Windsor. He was next appoint- 
ed Latin Secretary to King Edward : upon one occasion, he is 
stated to have composed and transcribed, with his usual ele- 
gance, in three days, 47 letters to princes and personages, of 
whom cardinals were the lowest. On the accession of Queen 
Elizabeth he was reappointed her Latin secretary and tutor, and 
read some hours with the Queen every day. In 1563, upon the 
invitation of Sir Richard Sackville, he began to write the School- 
master, a treatise on Education, considered by Dr. Johnson to 
contain the best advice that was ever given for the study of lan- 
guages. Ascham died in 1568, lamented as a scholar and a man ; 
when Queen Elizabeth heard of his death, she exclaimed, " she 
would rather have thrown ten thousand pounds into the sea, than 
have lost her Ascham." His great benefit to literature was his 



78 School-Days of Eminent Men. 

introduction of an easy and natural style into English writing, 
instead of the pedantic taste of his day ; he adopted, he tells us, 
the counsel of an ancient writer, " io speak as the common peo- 
ple do, to think as wise men do." One of Ascham's tracts (on 
the Affairs of Germany) is described by Dr. Johnson as written 
" in a style which to the ears of that age was undoubtedly mel- 
lifluous, and which is now a very valuable specimen of genuine 
English." 

LADY JANE GREY AND HER SCHOOLMASTER. 

Foremost among the learned women of this time was the 
beauteous Lady Jane Grey, who was born at Bradgate, on the 
border of Charnwood Forest, four miles from Leicester, and edu- 
cated by Aylmer, her father's chaplain. The story of her " al- 
most infancy " would be incredible were it not well authenticated. 
Burton calls her " that most noble and admired Princess Lady 
Jane Grey ; who being but young, at the age of seventeen years, 
as John Bale writeth, attained to such excellent learning, in the 
Hebrew, Greek, and Latin tongues, and also in the study of di- 
vinity, by the instruction of Mr. Aylmer, as appeareth by her 
many writings, letters, etc., that, as Mr. Fox saith of her, had 
her fortune been answerable to her bringing up, undoubtedly 
she might have been compared to the house of Vespasian, Sem- 
j)ronius, and Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi in Rome, and, in 
these days, the chiefest men of the universities." At Bradgate 
Roger Ascham paid the Lady Jane a visit, wdiich he thus de- 
scribes in his Schoolmaster : 

" Before I went into Germanic, I came to Brodegate, in Leicestershire, to take my leave 
of that noble Lady Jane Grey, to whom I was exceeding much beholding. Her parentes, 
the Duke and the Dutchesse, with all the householde, Gentlemen and Gentleweemen, were 
hunting in the Parke : I found her in her chamber, reading Phjedon Platonis in Greeke, 
and that with as much delite, as some gentleman would read a merry tale in Bocase. After 
salutation and dutie done, with some other talke, I asked her why shee should leese such 
pastime in the Parke. Smiling she answered me : I wisse, all their sport in the Parke, is 
but a shadow to that pleasure, that I finde in Plato : Alas good folke, they never felt what 
true pleasure ment. And how came you, Madame, quoth I, to this deepe knowledge of 
pleasure, and what did chiefly allure you vnto it, seeing not many women, but very fewe 
men have attained thereunto ? I will tell you, quoth shee, and tell you a troth, which per- 
chance ye will marvel at. One of the greatest benefits that ever God gauve me, is, that 
hee sente so sharp and seuere parentes, and so gentle a schoolmaster. For when I am ia 
presence of either father or mother, whether I speake, keepe silence, sit, stand, or go, eate, 
drinke, be merry, or sad, bee swoing, pl:)ying, dancing, or any thing els, I must doe it, as 
it were, in such weight, measure, and number, euen so perfectly, as God made the world, 
or ells, I am so sharply taunted, so cruelly threatened, yea presently sometimes, with 
pinches, nippes, and bobbes, and other wayes, which I will not name, for the honor I beare 
them, so without measure misordered, that I think myself in hell, till time come, that I 
must go to Mr. Elmer, who teaches me so gently, so pleasantly, with such faire allurements 
to learning, that I thinke all the time nothing, while I am with him. And when I am 
called from him, I fall on weeping, because, whatever I do els but learning, is full of greefe, 
trouble, feare, and whole misliking vnto mee ; and thus my booke hath been so much my 
pleasure and more, that in respect to it, all other pleasure, in very deede, bee but trifles 
and troubles vnto mee. — I remember this talke gladly, both because it is so worthy of mem- 
ory, and because also it was the last talke that ever I had, and the last time that ever I saw 
that noble and worthy lady." * 

* Scholemaster, fol. edit. 1571. 



Progress of Education. 79 

On the morning of her execution, the Lady Jane wrote a let- 
ter in Greek to her sister on the blank leaf of a Testament in 
the same language, and in her note-book three sentences in 
Greek. Latin, and English, of which the last is as follows : " If 
my faults deserved punishment, my youth, at least, and my im- 
prudence, were worthy of excuse. God and posterity will show 
me favour." 

Fuller says of Jane : " She had the innocence of childhood, 
the beautie of youth, the soliditie of middle, the gravitie of old 
age, and all at eighteen : the bust of a princesse, the learning of 
a clerk, the life of a saint, yet the death of a malefactor, for her 
parents' offences." 

SIR ANTHONY COOK AND HIS FOUR LEARNED DAUGHTERS. 

In the reign of Elizabeth, ladies generally understood Italian, 
French, the lute, often some Latin, and sometimes the use of the 
globes,' and astronomy. The plan of the education of females 
which ihe example of Sir Thomas More had rendered popular, 
continued to be pursued among the superior classes of the com- 
munity. The learned languages, which, in the earlier part of 
Elizabeth's reign, contained everything elegant in literature, still 
formed a requisite of fashionable education ; and many young 
ladies could not only translate the authors of Greece and Rome, 
but compose in their languages with considerable elegance. 

Sir Anthony Cook, whom we have already mentioned as tutor 
to Edward VI., bestowed the most careful education on his four 
daughters ; and they severally rewarded his exertions, by becom- 
ing not only proficients in literature, but distinguished for their 
excellent conduct as mothers of families. Their classical ac- 
quirements made them conspicuous even among the women of 
fashion of that age. Katherine, who became Lady Killigrew, 
wrote Latin Hexameters and Pentameters, which would appear 
with credit in the Musce Etonenses. Mildred, the wife of Lord 
Burleigh, is described by Roger Ascham as the best Greek scholar 
among the young women of England, Lady Jane Grey always 
excepted. Anne, the mother of Francis Bacon, was distinguished 
both as a linguist and as a theologian. She corresponded in 
Greek with Bishop Jewell, and translated his Apologice from the 
Latin so correctly that neither he nor Archbishop Parker could 
suggest a single alteration. She also translated a series of ser- 
mons on fate and free-will, from the Tuscan. 

Yet, Lord Macaulay considers the highly-educated ladies of 
this period, and their pursuits, to have been unfairly extolled at 
the expense of the women of our time, through one very obvi- 
ous and very important circumstance being overlooked. " In 



80 School-Bays of Eminent Men. 

the time of our Heniy VIII. and Edward VL," says our histo- 
rian, " a person who did not read Greek and Latin could read 
nothing, or next to nothing. The Italian was the only modern 
language which presented anything that could be called a litera- 
ture. All the valuable books extant in all the vernacular dia- 
lects of Europe would hardly have filled a single shelf. Eng- 
land did not yet possess Shakspeare's Plays and the Fairy Queen, 
nor France Montaigne's Essays, nor Spain Don Quixote. In 
looking round a well-furnished library, how many English or 
French books can we find which were extant when Lady Jane 
Grey and Queen Elizabeth received their education ? Chaucer, 
Gower, Froissart, Rabelais, nearly complete the list. It was, 
therefore, absolutely necessary that a woman should be unedu- 
cated, or classically educated. Latin was then the language of 
courts, as well as of the schools ; of diplomacy, and of theologi- 
cal and political controversy. This is no longer the case : the 
ancient tongues are supplanted by the modern languages of Eu- 
rope, with which English w^omen are at least as well acquainted 
as English men. When, therefore, we compare the acquirements 
of Lady Jane Grey with those of an accomplished young woman 
of our own time, we have no hestitation in awarding the superi- 
ority to the latter." 

A TRUANT PUNISHED IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 

Sir Peter Carew, born of a distinguished family in Devon- 
shire, in 1514, after a turbulent youth, took an active part in the 
Continental wars of that period. He was at the battle of Pa- 
via, subsequently became a favorite of Henry VIIL, and lived 
through a part of the reign of Queen Elizabeth. His life was 
written by a cotemporary (John Vowell, alias Hooker, of Ex- 
eter), and describes Peter, "in his prime days, as very pert and 
forward, wherefore his father 

brought him, heing about the age of twelve years, to Exeter, to school, and lodged him 
with one Thomas Hunt, a draper and alderman of that city, and did put him to school to 
one Freers, then master of the Grammar School there ; and whether it were that he was in 
fear of the said Freers, for he was counted to be a very hard and cruel master, or whether 
it were for that he had no affection to his learning, true it is he would never keep his 
school, but was a daily truant, and always ranging ; whereof the schoolmaster misliking 
did oftentimes complain unto the foresaid Thomas Hunt, his host ; upon which complaint, 
so made, the said Thomas would go, and send, abroad to seek out the said Peter. And, 
among many times thus seeking him, it happened that he found him about the walls of the 
said cit3', and, he running to take him, the boy climbed up upon the top of one of the 
highest garrets of a turret of the said wall, and would not, for any request, come down, 
saying moreover to his host that, if he did press too fast upon him, he would surely cast him- 
self down headlong over the wall ; and then, said he, 'I shall break my neck, and thou 
Shalt be hanged, because thou makest me to leap down.' His host, being afraid of the boy, 
departed, and left some to watch him, and so to take him, as soon as he came down. But 
forthwith he sent to -ir William Carew, and did advertise him of this, and of sundry other 
shrewed parts of his son Peter, who, at his next coming then to Exeter, called his son be- 
fore him, tied him in a line, and delivered him to one of his servants to be carried about 
the town, as one of his hounds, and they led him home to Mohun"s ottery, like a dog. And 
after that, he being come to Mohan's ottery, he coupled him to one of his hounds, and so 
continued him for a time." 



Progress of Education. 81 

The discipline at Oxford was about this time very rigid ; for 
we read that Samuel Parker, the Puritan, who was educated at 
Wadham College, " did," says Anthony a Wood, " according to 
his former breeding, lead a strict and religious life, fasted, prayed, 
with other students, weekly together, and for their refection, 
feeding on thin broth, made of oatmeal and water only, they 
were commonly called gruellers'^ 

FLOGGING IN SCHOOLS. 

In the Middle Ages, we read of, besides stationary, itinerant 
schoolmasters, and teachers of reading. In the wood-cuts of a 
work printed by Caxton, the schoolmaster holds a rod in his 
hand, and the boy kneels before him. The practice of flogging 
is sometimes engraved upon the seals of public schools : thus, 
the seal of St, Olave's School, dated 1576, represents the Mas- 
ter sitting in a high-backed chair at his desk, on which is a book, 
and the rod is conspicuously displayed to the terror of five 
scholars standing before him ; and the seal of St. Saviour's 
School, 1573, represents the Master seated in a chair, with a 
group of thickly-trussed pupils before him. Dr. Busby, who 
was 50 years head-master of Westminster School, is said to have 
boasted his rod to be the sieve to prove good scholars ; but his 
severity is traditional. The practice of flogging in Winchester 
is illustrated upon the walls of the great School, as already 
described. 

WESTMINSTER COLLEGE SCHOOL FOUNDED. 

It is one of the unfading glories of ancient Westminster that 
it has been a seat of learning since the time when it was a 
" thorny island," and at least eight centuries since was rebuilt 
the Abbey Church " to the honour of God and St. Peter." The 
queen of the Confessor is related to have played with a West- 
minster scholar in grammar, verses, and logic, as she met him in 
his way from the monastery school to the palace, as related by 
the chronicler with all the circumstantial minuteness of the ac- 
count of a royal visit of yesterday. Equally direct is the evi- 
dence that, from the latter part of the reign of Edward III., 
down to the dissolution of the Abbey, a salary was paid to a 
schoolmaster, styled '•'' Magister Scholar ium pro eruditione puer- 
orum grammaticorum" who was distinguished from the person 
who taught the children of the choir to sing. 

The earliest school was thus an appurtenance of the monas- 
tery ; and is included in the draft (in the archives of the Chap- 
ter) of the new establishment for the See of Westminster. 

During the reign of Queen Mary, Cardinal Pole appears to 
6 



82 Scliool-Days of Eminent Men, 

have suffered the school to languish wholly unsupported. Her 
successor enforced the right of election to studentships, restored 
the revenues, and the foundation of an Upper and Lower Master 
and forty scholars, and gave tlie present statutes, whence Eliza- 
beth has received the honorable title of Foundress. This Queen 
added an important statute to regulate the mode of election of 
no^'itiates into St. Peter's College. Evelyn has recorded one of 
these examinations : 

In 1661, May 13, 1 heard and saw such exercises at the election of scholars at Westmin- 
ster School to be sent to the University, in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, in themes and 
extemporary verses, with such readiness and will as wonderfully astonished me in such 
youths. 

Dean Goodman was the next benefactor, in obtaining a perpet- 
ual grant of his prebend of Chiswick, to be a place of refuge for 
the members of the Chapter and College whenever pestilence 
might be desolating Westminster. During this Deanship, the 
scholars were lodged in one spacious chamber, their commons 
were regulated, and the apartments of the Masters received an 
increase of comfort and accommodation. Among the earliest 
grants is a perpetual annuity of twenty marks, made in 1594, by 
Cecil, Lord High Treasurer, to be presented as gifts to scholars 
elected to either of the Universities. 

Before the middle of the reign of Elizabeth, the rudiments of 
the Greek language were taught to boys at Westminster School ; 
and Harrison, in his preface to Holinshed, about 1586, states 
that the boys of the three great collegiate schools (Winchester, 
Eton, and Westminster) were " well entered in the knowledge 
of the Latin and Greek tongues and rules of versifying." 

Dean Goodman had for his successor that man of prayer and " most rare preacher," Dr. 
Launcelot Andrewes, who would often supply the place of the Masters for a week together. 
It was one of his simple pleasures, " with a sweetness and compliance with the recreations 
of youth," always to be attended, in his little retirements to the cheerful village of Chis- 
wick, by two of his scholars ; and often thrice in the week, it is said, he assembled about 
him in his study those of the Upper Form ; and the earnest little circle frequently, through 
the whole evening, with reverential attention, heard his exposition of the Sacred Text ; 
while he also pointed out to them those sources of knowledge in Greek and Latin, from 
which he had gathered his own stores of varied learning. — AValcott's Memorials of West- 

Once more evil days fell upon the rising school. The Abbey 
was desecrated, and the families of the scholars were threatened 
or assailed by the horrors of the Great Rebellion, when Parlia- 
ment, having for about four years exercised power over the 
School through a Committee, in 1649 assumed a protectorate, 
intrusting the management of the School to a government of 
fifty members established in the Deanery. The fee or inherit- 
ance of many of the Abbey estates was sold ; old rents only be- 
ing reserved to the College. This control lasted until the Re- 
storation in 1660, since which period the scholars have been 



Progress of Education. 83 

maintained by the common revenues of the Collegiate Church, at 
a co?t of about 1200/. a-year. 

The Queen's Scholars wear caps and gowns ; and there are 
four '' Bishop's Boys" educated free, who wear purple gowns, 
and have GO/, annually amongst them. Besides ihh foundation^ 
a great number of sons of the nobility and gentry are educated 
here. Of the Queen's Scholars an examination takes place in 
Rogation week, when four are elected to Trinity College, Cam- 
bridge, and four to Christchurch, Oxford ; scholarships of about 
60/. a-year. 

The scholars from the fourth, fifth, and Shell Forms " stand 
out" in Latin, Greek, and grammatical questionings, on the 
Wednesday before Ascension Day, in the presence of the Head 
Master, who presides as umpire, when the successful competitors 
being chosen to fill the vacancies, "the Captain of the Election" 
is chaired round Dean's Yard, or the school court. On Rogation 
Tuesday, a dinner is given to the electors, and all persons con- 
nected with the School, by the Dean and Chapter ; and any old 
Westminster scholar of sufficient rank or standing is entitled to 
attend it. After dinner, epigrams are spoken by a large propor- 
tion of the Queen's Scholars. There are several funds available 
to needy scholars ; and the whole foundation and school is man- 
aged by the Dean and Chapter of Westminster. 

The school buildings are in part ancient. You enter the 
School court from the Broad Sanctuary, through an archway in 
a block of houses of media3val architecture. The porch of the 
School is stated to have been designed by Inigo Jones. On the 
north front is the racket-court, formed against part of the west 
wall of the dormitory. The venerable School itself, once the 
dormitory of the monks, ranges behind the eastern cloister of 
the Abbey. It is a long and spacious building, wdth a semicircu- 
lar recess at one end, the Head Master's table standing in front 
of it ; four tiers of forms, one above the other, are ranged along 
the eastern and western walls ; and the room has a massive open- 
timber roof of chestnut. The Upper and Lower Schools are 
divided by a bar, which formerly bore a curtain : over this bar 
on Shrove Tuesday, at eleven o'clock, the College cook, attended 
by a verger, having made his obeisance to the Masters, proceeds 
to toss a pancake into the Upper School, once a warning to pro- 
ceed to dinner in the Hall. 

An interesting tradition is attached to the bar at the time it bore a curtain. Two boys 
at play, by chance made a grievous rent in the pendent drapery ; and one of the delinquents 
suffered his generous companion to bear the penalty of the offense — a severe flogging. 
Long years went by ; the Civil War had parted chief friends ; and the boys bad grown up 
to manhood, unknown to each other. One of them, now become a Judge and sturdy Re- 
publican, wa.'T presiding at th« trial of some captive cavaliers, and was ready to opbraid 
and eentence them, when he recognized in the worn features of one gray-l»iired veteran, 



84 School-Bays of Eminent Men. 

the well -remembered look of the gallant boy who had once borne punishment for him. By 
certain answers, which in the examination he elicited, his suspicions were confirmed ; and 
with an immediate resolve, he posted to London, where, by his influence with Oliver Crom- 
well, he succeeded in preserving his early friend from the scaffold. — Walcott's Memoria's 
of Westminster. 

The School is fraught with pious memories. Here "that sweet 
singer of the Temple, George Herbert," was reared ; and that 
love of choral music, which " was his heaven upon earth," was, 
no doubt, implanted here, while he went up to pray in the glo- 
rious Abbey. And it was here that South, in his loyal child- 
hood, reader of the Latin prayers for the morning, publicly 
prayed for Charles I. by name, " but an hour or two at most 
before his sacred head was struck off." Nor can we forget 
among the ushers, the melody of whose Latin poems had led him 
to be called "Sweet Vinny Bourne;" or the mastership of Busby, 
who boasted his rod to be the sieve to prove good scholars, and 
walked with covered head before Charles IL ; then humbly at 
the gate assured his Majesty that it was necessary for his dignity 
before his boys to be the greatest man there, even though a king 
were present. How successfully, too, is Busby commemorated 
in the whole-length portrait of the great schoolmaster standing 
beside his favorite pupil, Spratt. Upon the walls are inscribed 
many great names ; and in the library is preserved part of the 
form on which Dryden once sat, and on which his autograph is 
cut. 

In the Census Alumnorum, or list oi foundation scholars, are 
Bishops Overall and Ravis, translators of the Bible ; Hakluyt, 
collector of Voyages ; Gunter, inventor of the Scale ; " Master 
George Herbert ; " the poets Cowley and Dryden ; South ; 
Locke ; Bishops Atterbury, Spratt, and Pearce ; the poet Prior, 
and ^tepney the statesman ; Rowe and " Sweet Vinny Bourne," 
the poets ; Churchill, the satirist ; Warren Hastings ; Everard 
Home, surgeon ; Dr. Drury, of Harrow School, etc. Among 
the other eminent persons educated here are Lord Burleigh ; 
Ben Jonson ; Nat Lee ; Sir Christopher Wren; Jasper Mayne, 
the poet; Barton Booth, the actor ; Blackmore, Browne, Dyer, 
Hammond, Aaron Hill, Cowper, and Southey, the poets ; Home 
Tooke ; Gibbon, the historian ; Cumberland, the dramatist ; Col- 
man the Younger ; Sir Francis Burdett ; Harcourt, Archbishop 
of York ; the Marquis of Lansdowne ; Lord John Russell ; the 
Marquis of Anglesey ; Sir John Cam Hobhouse (Lord Brough- 
ton) ; George Bidder, of calculating fame, now the eminent 
civil engineer. 

Among the eminent Masters are Camden, " the Pausanias of 
England," who had Ben Jonson for a scholar ; and Dr. Busby, 



Progress of Education. 85 

who had Dryden, and who, out of the bench of bishops, taught 
sixteen. 

The College Hall, originally the Abbot's refectory, was built 
by Abbot Litlington, temp. Edward III. : the floor is paved with 
chequered Turkish marble ; at the south end is a musician's gal- 
lery, now used as a pantry, and behind are butteries and hatches ; 
at the north side, upon a dais, is the high table ; those below, of 
chestnut-wood, are said to have been formed out of the wreck of 
the Armada. The roof-timbers spring from carved corbels, with 
angels bearing shields of the Confessor's and Abbot's arms; and 
a small louver rises above the central hearth, upon which in win- 
ter a wood and charcoal fire used to burn until the year 1850.* 
The Librarj'- is a modern Italian room, and contains several me- 
morials of the attachment of " Westminsters." The old dormi- 
tory, built in 1380, was the granary of the monastery; and was 
replaced by the present dormitory in 1722, from the designs of 
the Earl of Burlington : its walls are thickly inscribed with 
names. Here Latin plays are represented upon the second 
Thursday in December, and the Monday before and after that 
day. These performances superseded the old Mysteries and 
Moralities in the reign of Queen Mary, when the boy actors 
vvere chiefly the acolytes, who served at mass. "Warton men- 
tions that this " liberal exercise is yet preserved, and in the spirit 
of true classical purity, at the College of Westminster." Gar- 
rick designed scenery for these pieces ; but the modern dresses 
formerly used were not exchanged for Greek costume until 1839. 
The plays acted of late years have been the Andria, Phormio, 
Eunuchiis, and Adelp/n, of Terence, with Latin prologue and 
epilogue pleasantly reflecting in their humor events of the day. 
Two new scenes were drawn for the theatre, in 1857, by Pro- 
fessor Cockerell, R.A. 

Boating is a favorite amusement of the Westminsters, who 
have often contested the championship of the Thames with Eton. 
On May 4, 1837, the Westminsters won a match at Eton ; when, 
by desire of William IV., the victors visited Windsor Castle, and 
were there received by the good-natured king. 

A POOR WESTMINSTER SCHOLAR. 

Dr. Stubbe, the eminent physician, one of the most learned 
men of his time, was born in 1631, near Spilsby, in Lincolnshire, 
whence his father, an Anabaptist minister, removed to Ireland ; 
but when ihe Rebellion broke out in that country in 1641, his 
mother fled with him to London, walking thither on foot from 

* Fires continued to be made on a hearth in the middle of the hall called the reredos, 
in many college halls in Oxford and Cambridge, until about the year 1820. 



86 School-Bays of Emineyit Men. 

Liverpool. She maintained herself in the metropolis by her 
needle, and sent her son, then about ten years old, to West- 
minster School. Here he frequently obtained pecuniary relief 
from his school-fellows, as a remuneration for writing their 
exercises. Busby was struck by Stubbe's rare talents and assi- 
duity, and introduced him to Sir Henry Vane, who happened one 
day to come into the school ; when Sir Henry relieved the im- 
mediate wants of the lad, and remained for ever afterward his 
steady friend ; assisting him at his election to Oxford, w^here he 
became of considerable consequence ; his reputation for learn- 
ing increased daily, and he used to converse fluently in Greek 
in the public schools. 

MERCHANT TATLORS' SCHOOL FOUNDED. 

The royal example of Edward VI. was nobly followed by one 
of the great City companies founding, in the succeeding reign, a 
grammar-school in the metropolis, principally through the per- 
sonal benevolence of its members. In the year 1561, the Mer- 
chant Taylors' Company, chiefly by the gift of 500/., and other 
subscriptions of members of the Court of Assistants, raised a 
fund for this great educational object. Among the contributors 
was Sir Thomas White, some time master of the Company, and 
who had recently founded St. John's College, Oxford. With the 
above fund, the generous band of citizens purchased a certain 
property lying between Cannon-street and the Thames, part of 
" the Manor of the Rose," a palace originally built by Sir John 
Poultney, Knt., five times Lord Mayor of London, in the reign 
of Edward III. In these premises, consisting principally of a 
gate-house and court-yard, the Company established their school. 
The Great Fire, however, destroyed the ancient buildings; and in 
1675, the present school and the head-master's residence were 
erected: it includes a library (on the site of an ancient chapel), 
which contains a fair collection of theological and classical works. 
The school now consists of about 260 boys, who are charged 10/. 
per annum each : they are admitted at any age, on the nomination 
of the members of the Court of the Conpany in rotation; and 
the scholars may remain until the Monday after St. John the 
Baptist's Day preceding their nineteenth birthday. Hebrew, 
Greek, and Latin have been taught since the foundation of the 
school ; mathematics, writing, and arithmetic were added in 1829, 
and French and modern history in 1846. There is no property 
belonging to the school except the buildings : it is supported 
by the Merchant Taylors' Company out of their several " funds,'* 
without any specific fund being set apart for that object ; it has, 
therefore, been exempt from the inquiry of the Charity Commis- 



Progress of Udacation. '87 

sioners ; but, like Winchester, Eton, and Westminister, it has a 
college almost appropriated to its scholars. Thirty-seven out of 
the fifty fellowships of St. John's College, Oxford, and other 
exhibitions at Oxford and Cambridge, are attached to it ; the 
election to which takes place annually on St. Barnabas's Day 
(June 11), w^hen the school prizes are distributed; there is 
another speech day (Doctors' Day) in December. Plays were 
formerly acted by the boys of this school, as at Westminster: the 
earliest instance known was in 1665, W'hen the scholars per- 
formed, in the old Hall of the Merchant Taylors' Company, 
Beaumont and Fletcher's comedy of " Love's Pilgrimage," but 
under order that this " should bee noe precident for the future." 
Garrick, who was a personal friend of the head-master in his 
time, took great interest in these performances. They have 
been continued to our day, in a noble crypt, which is all that 
remains of the manorial mansion of the Rose. The School 
Feasts and Anniversary Feasts of the old scholars have, how- 
ever, long been held in the Company's Hall. The School has 
ever been famed for the classical attainments and sound Prot- 
estant principles of her sons, whence the boys have been called 
" Loyalty's Bull-dogs." When James IL recommended a per- 
son suspected of Popery to be head-master of the School, the 
Company prevailed on the King to recall his recommendation ; 
and in 1796, great was the scandal to the foundation when tvro 
mischievous scholars hoisted a tri- colored flag on the ramparts of 
the Tower, an act which was indignantly repudiated by their 
school-fellows, and by one of the under-masters chronicling the 
affair in a song which became very popular. 

Amongst the eminent scholars educated at Merchant Taylors' 
were, Bishops Andrewes, Dove, and Tomson, three of the trans- 
lators of the Bible ; Archbishop Juxon, who attended Charles 
I. to the scaffold ; Bishop Hopkins (of Londonderry) ; Archbish- 
ops Sir William Dawes, Gilbert, and Boulter; Bishop Van 
Mildert, and eleven other prelates ; Titus Gates, who contrived 
the " Popish Plot ;" Sir James Whitelocke, Justice of the King's 
Bench; Bulstrode Whitelocke, who wrote his "Memorials;" 
Shirley, the dramatic poet, cotemporary with Massinger; 
Charles Wheatly, the rituahst ; Neale, the historian of the Puri- 
tans ; Edmund Calamy, and his grandson Edmund, the Non- 
conformists — the former died in 1666, from seeing London in 
ashes after the Great Fire; the great Lord Clive; Dr. Yicesi- 
mus Knox, subsequently celebrated as the head-master of Tun- 
bridge School; Dr. William Lowth, the learned classic and 
theologian ; Nicholas Amhurst, associated with Bolingbroke and 
Pulteney in the Craftsman ; Charles Mathews the eider, cosae- 



88 Scliool'Days of Eminent Men, 

dian ; Lieut. Col. Denham, the explorer of Central Africa ; and 
J. L. Adolphus, the barrister, who wrote a History of the Reign 
of George III. Also, Sir John Dodson, Queen's Advocate ; Sir 
Henry Ellis, and Samuel Birch, of the British Museum ; John 
Gough Nichols, F.S.A., etc. 

GRESHAM COLLEGE FOUNDED. 

In the middle of the reign of Elizabeth, one of her merchant- 
princes — Flos Mercatorum, as he was deservedly styled — 
evinced his love of the higher branches of knowledge by the 
foundation and endowment of a College which considerably 
assisted the promotion of science in England in the early part 
of the seventeenth century. The founder was Sir Thomas Gre- 
sham, the originator of the Royal Exchange, the rents arising 
from which, together with his mansion, on the death of Lady 
Gresham, in 1597, to be vested in the Corporation of London 
and the Mercers' Company. They were conjointly to nominate 
seven professors, to lecture successively, one on each day of the 
week, their salaries being 50/. per annum: a more liberal remu- 
neration than Henry VIII. had appointed for the Regius Profes- 
sors of Divinity at Oxford and Cambridge, and equivalent to 
400/. or 500/. at the present day. The Lectures commenced 
June, 1597, in Gresham's mansion, which, with alms-houses and 
gardens, extended from Bishopsgate-street westward into Broad- 
street. Here the Royal Society originated in 1645, and met 
(with interruptions) until 1710. The buildings were then neg- 
lected, and in 1768 were taken down, the Excise Office being 
built upon their site; and the reading of the Lectures was trans- 
ferred to a room on the south-east side of the Royal Exchange; 
the lecturers' salaries being raised to 100/. each, as an equiva- 
lent for the lodging they had in the old College, of which there 
is a view, by Vertue, in Ward's Lives of the Gresham Pi'ofessorSf 
1740. On the rebuilding of the Royal Exchange, the Gresham 
Committee provided for the College, in Basinghall -street, at the 
corner of Cateaton-street, a handsome stone edifice, in the 
enriched Roman style, with a Corinthian entrance-portico. It 
contains a large library, and professors' rooms; and a lecture- 
room, or theatre, capable of holding 500 persons. The Lectures, 
on Astronomy, Physic, Law, Divinity, Rhetoric, Geometry, and 
Music, are here read to the public gratis, during " Term Time," 
daily, except Sundays, in Latin and English. 

STATESMEN, POETS, AND DRAMATISTS OF ELIZABETH'S REIGN. 

We now approach a galaxy of bright stars of the Elizabethan 
age, that it may be convenient here to group together; although 



Progress of Education. 89 

many incidents of their boyhood and school-days will be related 
elsewhere in this volume. 

At the grammar school were taught the illustrious men of this 
brilliant period of our history. The great Lord Burleigh, who 
was upward of 50 years prime minister of England, was placed 
successively at the grammar schools of Grantham and Stam- 
ford; at the age of 15 he was removed to St. John's College, 
Cambridge ; at 1 6 he delivered a lecture on the logic of the 
schools, and in three years afterward another on the Greek 
language; and in later life, books, and the superintendence of 
his garden at Theobalds, formed his chief amusements in his few 
hours of leisure. 

Two of the most acccomplished men of this age were "the 
Admirable Crichton," and Sir Philip Sidney, both born in the 
same year, 1561. Crichton was educated at St. Andrews, then 
the most celebrated seminary in Scotland : at fourteen he took his 
degree of Master of Arts. Sidney was born at Penshurst, in 
Kent, and was sent at an early age to the Royal Free Grammar 
School at Shrewsbury, which had then been founded but ten 
years. This school is free to sons of ancient burgess freemen of 
Shrewsbury: it has an income from endowment of 3100/. per 
annum, and several exhibitions. 

Among the learned ladies of the above period was Mary 
Sidney, Countess of Pembroke, " Sidney's sister, and Pembroke's 
mother :" for her amusement Sir Philip Sidney wrote his heroic 
romance, entitled The Countess of Pemhrohe's Arcadia. 

Michael Drayton, stated to have been born in Warwickshire 
about 1563, and the son of a butcher, discovered in his earliest 
years such proofs of a superior mind, that he was made page to 
a person of quality, — a situation which was not in that age 
thought too humble for the sons of gentlemen. He is said to 
have studied at Oxford, and in early life was warmly patronized 
by persons of consequence. His Polyolhion^ a poetical descrip- 
tion of England, is so accurate in its information as to be quoted 
as an authority by antiquaries : Drayton was poet-laureate in 
1626. 

Beaumont and Fletcher may be described as born and bred 
"fine gentlemen," educated in all the conventionalities and 
artificial manners of their time. Massinger, the son of one of 
the Earl of Pembroke's retainers (employed as an official mes- 
senger to Queen Elizabeth), was born at Salisbury, and was sent 
early to Oxford by the Earl of Pembroke, the patron of logic and 
philosophy ; but the young Massinger passed much of his college 
time in reading poetry and romances. 

Of Sir Walter Raleigh's school-days we have scanty record; 



90 School-Days of Eminent 3Ien. 

but it is stated that about 1568, he became a commoner of Oriel 
College, Oxford, and Fuller adds, of Christchurch also. At 
Oriel, he proved "the ornament of the junior fry," and was a 
proficient in oratory and philosophy. His History of the World 
is one of the noblest works of a noble mind ; and his Counsels 
to his Son is a treasure of great value. 

Neither have we any particulars of Spenser's education, until 
we find him, in 1 659, entered a sizar (one of the humblest class of 
students) of Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he continued 
to attend seven years, taking his degree of M.A. in 1576. 

Ben Jonson was born in Hartshorne-lane, Strand, in 1574; 
he was sent early to "a private school in St. Martin's Church;" 
and next to Westminster School, under Camden, then junior 
master. He traveled with the son of Sir Walter Raleigh on the 
Continent, and on his return went to Cambridge. Jonson is 
said to have worked with his father-in-law, a bricklayer, in 
building the garden wall of Lincoln's Inn, when, as Fuller says, 
"having a trowel in his hand, he had a book in his pocket;" and 
there is no reason to doubt this statement. 

We now come to the most illustrious cotemporary of Ben 
Jonson, born ten years earlier, in 1564, William Shakspeare, 
who was educated at the Grammar School of Stratford-upon- 
Avon, of which we shall speak more at length hereafter. 

William Harvey, the author of the true theory of the circula- 
tion of the blood (and, perhaps, the only man who ever lived 
to see his own discovery established in his lifetime), was born at 
Folkestone, in 1578, and at ten years of age was sent to the 
Grammar School at Canterbury; and having there laid the 
foundation of Classical learning, he was removed to Cambridge 
in 1593. In five years he left the University, and went abroad 
for the acquisition of medical knowledge, and fixed himself in 
his 23d year at Padua University, where he took his doctor's 
degree in 1602, being then only 24 years old. 

RUGBY SCHOOL FOUNDED. 

Our narrative has now reached that "critical epoch in the 
advance of civilization, when the discovery of a new world had 
opened space to the expanding intellect of the old one, which 
had just then been awakened from the long slumber of the dark 
ages by the restoration of classical literature ; and a new life was 
thus infused into the sacred cause ef education. Luther had 
taught the laity the weapon with which they could wrest from 
the papal clergy the monopoly of knowledge ; and the dissolu- 
tion of monasteries had thrown into the market lands hitherto 



Progress of Education, 91 

locked up in mortmain, with which far-sighted benefactors were 
enabled to endow their new foundations.* 

One of the first to seize this prevalent spirit was Lawrence 
Sheriff, a native of Rugby, who had accumuhUed a large fortune 
in dealing with the fruits and spices of the West Indies. He 
was warden of the Grocers' Company in 1566; and in Fox's 
Book of Martyrs he is spoken of as "servant to the Lady Eliz- 
abeth, and sworn unto her Grace," which seems to imply that he 
was "grocer to the Queen:" he kept shop "near to Newgate 
Market." Sheriff died in 1567, and by his last will, made seven 
weeks previously, bequeathed a third of his Middlesex estate 
to the foundation of "a fair and convenient school-house, and to the 
maintaining of an honest, discreet, and learned man to teach gram- 
mar;" the rents of that third, which then amounted to 8/. annu- 
ally, had sw^elled in 1825 to above 5500/. The estate in Lamb's 
Conduit Fields (originally Close) adjoins the Foundling Hospi- 
tal, and comprises Lamb's Conduit, Milman, New and Great 
Ormond, and other adjacent streets. 

Immediately upon the founder's death, the school was com- 
menced in a building in the rear of the house assigned for the 
master ; it consisted of one large room, having no playground 
attached. The first page of the school register, commencing in 
1675, shows that of the 26 entrances in that year, 12 M-ere boys 
not upon the foundation, and one of them came even from Cum- 
berland. The school now took a higher stamp ; and early in the 
list we find the Earls of Stamford and Peterborough, the Lords 
Craven, Griffin, Stawell, and Ward, the younger sons of the 
houses of Cecil and Greville, and many of the baronets of the 
adjacent counties. 

The school buildings w^ere from time to time enlarged ; until 
the improved value of the endowment enabled the trustees to 
commence, in 1809, the present structure, designed by Hakewill, 
in the Elizabethan style, and built nearly upon the same spot as 
the first humble dwelling. The buildings consist of cloisters on 
three sides of a court; the Great School, and the French and 
Writing Schools; the dining hall, and the chapel; and the mas- 
ter's house, where and in the town the boys are lodged. The 
group of buildings cost 35,000/., but are of "poor sham Gothic." 
A library has since been added. The only former playground 
was the churchyard ; but Rugby has now its bowling-green close, 
with its tall spiral elms ; and its playground, where cricket and 
foot-ball are followed out-of-doors with no less zest and delight 
than literature is pursued within. 

* Quarterly Review, No. 204. 



92 School-Days of Eminent Men, 

Foot-ball is the ga-me, par exce''le7ice, of Rugby, as cricket is of Eton. The fascination of 
this gentle pastime is its mimic war, and it is waged with the individual prowess of the 
Homeric conflicts, and with the personal valor of the Orlandos of mediaeval chivalry, be- 
fore villainous saltpetre had reduced the Knigh-errant to the ranks. The play is played 
out by boys with that dogged determination to win, that endurance of pain, that bravery 
of combative spirit, by which the adult is trained to face the cannon-ball with equal alac- 
rity. — Quarterly Review, No. 204. 

The instruction at Rugby retains the leading characteristics of 
the old school, being based on a thoroughly grounded study of 
Greek and Latin. But the treatment has been much improved: 
formerly the boys were ill-used, half imprisoned, and put on the 
smallest rations, a plentiful allowance of rod excepted ; and a 
grim tower is pointed out in which a late pedagogue. Dr. Wooll, 
was accustomed to inflict the birch unsparingly. Nevertheless, 
in Wooli's time were added six exhibitions to the eight already 
instituted ; books were first given as prizes for composition ; and 
the successful candidates recited their poems before the trustees, 
thus establishing the Speeches. 

To Dr. Wooll * succeeded Dr. Thomas Arnold, the second 
and moral founder of Rugby. Of the great change which he 
introduced in the face of education here, we can speak but in 
brief. Soon after he had entered upon his office, he made this 
memorable declaration upon the expulsion of some incorrigible 
pupils : " It is not necessary that this should be a school of three 
hundred, or one hundred, or of fifty boys ; but it is necessary 
that it should be a school of Christian gentlemen." 

The three ends at which Arnold aimed were — first, to incul- 
cate religious and moral principle, then gentlemanly conduct, and 
lastly, intellectual ability. One of his principal holds was in his 
boy sermons — that is, in sermons to which the young congrega- 
tion could and did listen, and of which he was the absolute in- 
ventor. The feelings of love, reverence, and confidence which 
he inspired, led his pupils to place implicit trust on his decision, 
and to esteem his approbation as their highest reward. His 
government of the school was no reign of terror ; he resorted 
to reasoning and talking as his first step, which failing, he ap- 
plied the rod as his ultima ratio, and this for misdemeanors inev- 
itable to youth — lying, for instance — and best cured by birch. 
He was not opposed to fagging, which boys accept as part and 
parcel of the institution of schools, and as the servitude of their 
feudal system ; all he aimed to do was to regulate, and, as it 
were, to legalize the exercise of it. The keystone of his govern- 
ment was in the Sixth Form, which he held to be an intermedi- 
a,te power between the master and masses of the school ; the 

* Dr. Wooll was small in stature, but powerful in stripes ; and under his head-master- 
ship Lord Lyttleton suggested for the grim closet in which the rods are kept, the witty 
motto: '• Great Cry and Little Wool.-'— See the Book of Rusby School, its History aiid 
Daily Life. 1856. J >= J > 



Progress of Education. 93 

value of which internal police he had learned from the Prefects 
at Wincliester. But he carefully watched over this dele^-ated 
authority, and put down any abuse of its power. The Pra^pos- 
itors themselves were no less benefited. " By appealing to their 
honor, by fostering their self-respect, and calling out their powers 
of governing their inferiors, he ripened their manhood, and they 
early learnt habits of command ; and this system, found to work 
so well, is continued, and with many of its excellent principles, 
is now acted on in most of the chief public schools of England."* 
Dr. Arnold died in 1841, on the day preceding his forty-seventh 
birth-day, having presided over the school for fourteen years : 
in the chapel at Rugby he rests from his labors, surrounded by 
those of his pupils who have been prematurely cut off. " Yet," 
touchingly says the Rugbeian writer in the Quarterly Revieiv, 
" if they have known few of the pleasures of this world, they at 
least have not, like him, felt many of its sorrows, and death has 
not separated those who in life were united." 

Dr. Arnold procured from the Crown a high mark of royal 
favor — her Majesty having founded an annual prize of a Gold 
Medal, to which several other prizes have been added. Dr. Ar- 
nold was succeeded in the head-mastership by the Rev. Dr. Tait, 
wdio retired on his appointment to the Deanery of Carlisle, in 
1849 ; and who, in 185G, was preferred to the bishopric of Lon- 
don. 

In the list of eminent Ilugbeians arc the Rev. John Parkhurst, the Greek and Hebrew 
lexicographer; Sir Ralph Abercrombie, the hero of Alexandria ; AVilliam Rray, F.S.A., 
the historian of Surrey ; Dr. Legge, Bishop of Oxford ; Sir Henry Halford, Bart., Presi 
dent of the College of Physicians ; Dr. Butler, editor of ^Eschylus, etc. 

HARROW SCHOOL FOUNDED. 

At the village of Harrow-on-the-Hill, ten miles north-west of 
London — where Lanfranc built a church, Thomas a Becket re- 
si led, and Wolsey w^as rector — in the reign of Elizabeth there 
lived a substantial yeoman named John Lyon. For many years 
previous to his death he had appropriated 20 marks annually to 
the instruction of poor children; and in 1571, he procured let- 
ters patent and a royal charter from the Queen, recognizing the 
foundation of a Free Grammar School, for the government of 
wdiich, in 1592, he drew up the orders, statutes, and rules. The 
head-master is directed to be, " on no account, below the degree 
of Master of Arts ; " or the usher " under that of a Bachelor of 
Arts." They are always to be "single men, unmarried." The 
stipends of the masters are settled; the forms specified; the 

* Quarterly Review. No. 204. Review of Tom BroiorCs School-days, a real picture 
drawn at Rugby of a boy of his class, at the moment when Dr. Arnold was working out 
his great educational experiment. 



94 School-Days of Eminent Men, 

books and exercises for each form marked out ; the mode of cor- 
rection described; the hours of attending school, the vacations 
and play-days appointed ; and the scholars' amusements directed 
to be confined to " driving a top, tossing a hand-ball, running and 
shooting ; " and for the last mentioned diversion all parents were 
required to furnish their children with " bow-strings, shafts, and 
braces to exercise shooting." In addition to scholars to be edu- 
cated freely, the schoolmaster is to receive the children of parish- 
ioners as well as " foreigners ; " from the latter " he may take 
such stipends and wages as he can get, except that they be of 
the kindred of John Lyon the founder." The sum of 20/. was 
allotted for four exhibitions — two in Gonville and Caius College, 
Cambridge ; the others in any college at Oxford — which schol- 
arships have been increased. The revenues of the School estates 
which Lyon left are now very considerable; so that one portion 
of the property, which 70 years ago produced only 100/. a-year, 
now returns 4000/. 

The school was built about three years after Lyon's decease ; * 
the school-room, fifty feet in length, has large, square, heavy- 
framed windows, and is partly wainscoted with oak, which is 
covered with the carved names of many generations of Harro- 
vians. The plastered walls above the wainscot were formerly 
filled with names and dates, but they have been obliterated with 
whitewash. Boards have since been put up on which the names 
are neatly carved, in regular order and of uniform size. 

Among these inscriptions are the names of Parr; Sheridan (only the initials R. B. S ) ; 
W.Jones (Sir William); Bennett (Bishop of Cloyne) ; Ryder (Bishop of Lichfield and 
Coventry); Murray (Bishop of Rochester) : Dymock (the Champion); Ryder ( Lord Ilar- 
rowby) ; Temple (Lord Palmerston) ; Lord Byron ; and Peel (Sir Robert) ; between the two 
last letters of the latter name is the name of Perciyal, as cut by the lamented statesman. 

Above the school-room is the Monitors' Library. Here is a 
portrait of Dr. Parr ; a portrait and bust of Lord Byron, and a 
sword worn by him when in Greece; and a superb fancy archery 
dress, worn on the day of shooting for the silver arrow, about 
the year 1766. Here, also, is a quarto volume of " Speech Bills." 

* John Lyon is buried in Harrow Church : the brass of his tomb states, " who hath 
founded a free grammar-school in this parish to have continuance for ever; and for main- 
tenance thereof, and for releyfFe of the poore, and of some poore schoUars in the universi- 
tyes, repairing of highwayes and other good and charitable uses, hath made conveyance of 
lands of good value to a corporation granted for that purpose. Prayse be to the Author of 
all goodness, who makes us myndful to follow his good example." Over the tomb is a 
marble monument erected by Old Harrovians in 1813 ; the Latin inscription written by Dr. 
Parr ; above, the sculptor, Flaxman, has represented a master and three pupils, said to be 
Dr. Butler, the then head-master, and the three Percevals. the sons of the Minister. 

Jn the church also is a monument by Westmacott, to Dr. Drury, with a bass-relief of two 
boys contemplating the bust of their master: the likenesses of the boys are appropriated to 
Sir Robert Peel and Lord Byron. Here likewise is a mural monument to Dr. Summer, 
head-master, with a Latin inscription by Dr. Parr. In the churchyard lies another head- 
master. Dr. Thackeray, who introduced the Eton system of Education at Karrow, which, 
with few modifications, has continued in use ever since. 



Progress of Education, 95 

Near the School is the Speech Room, built by old Harrovians : 
the windows are filled with painted glass, and here is a painting 
of Cicero pleading against Catiline, painted by Gavin Hamilton. 
There is a Chapel for the accommodation of the scholars only ; 
to which was added, in 1856, a "Memorial Chapel," in honor of 
those officers who fell in the Crimean war, who had been edu- 
cated at Harrow School.* The head-master's house is in the 
street of Harrow, and with the school buildings and chapel, is in 
the Elizabethan style. The device of the school is a lion, ram- 
pant, the armorial bearings of the founder, and a rebus of his 
name (motto, Stet Fortuna Dojuus), to which have been added 
two crossed arrows, denoting the ancient practice of archery 
enjoined by Lyon; and on the Anniversary, six or twelve boys 
shot for a silver arrow, the competitors wearing fancy dresses of 
spangled satin. The last arrow was contended for in 1771 : the 
butts were set up on a picturesqued spot, " worthy of a Roman 
amphitheatre," at the entrance to the village. 

Beyond the court-yard are courts for racket, a favorite game 
at Harrow. There is likewise a cricket-ground, and a bathing- 
place, formerly known as the Duck Puddle." 

The scholars, chiefly the sons of noblemen and gentlemen, 
number about 400. 

Among the eminent Harrovians are William Baxter, the antiquary and philologist ; John 
Dennis, the poet and critic; Bruce, the traveler in Abyssinia; Sir William Jones, the Ori- 
ental scholar ; the Rev. Dr. Parr ; the heroic Lord Rodney ; Richard Brinsley Sheridan ; 
Viscount Palmerston ; the Marquis Wellesley ; Mr. Malthus, the political economist ; 
Spencer Perceval ; Earl Spencer, who collected the magnificent library at Althorp ; the 
Earl of Aberdeen; W. B. Proctor (Barry Cornwall), the poet; Lord Elgin, who collected 
the " Mar bl«s •' from the Parthenon; Lord Chancellor Cottenham ; the Earl of Shaftes- 
bury ; and Lord Byron and Sir Robert Peel, both bornjin the same year, 1788. 

EDUCATION OF JAMES I. 

Prince James, only son of Mary Queen of Scots by Henry 
Lord Darnley, her second husband, was born in Edinburgh 
Castle, in 1566; and in consequence of the dethronement of his 
mother, was proclaimed King of Scotland by the title of James 
VI. in the following year, principally through the preponderance 
of the chiefs of the Presbyterian party over the Roman Catholic 
leaders. The direction of James's childhood was intrusted to the 
Earl of Mar, governor of Stirling Castle. To imbue the mind 
of the prince as early and as deeply as possible with the princi- 
ples which placed him upon the throne, was naturally regarded 
as an object of high importance; it was also considered that he 
should be early and thoroughly grounded in classical learning; 

* In the Chapel, the Church, and the School, there is no distinction of seats for the sons 
of noblemen. It was for this reason that Rufus King, the American Ambassador, sent his 
sons to Harrow, as the only school where no distinction was shown to rank. — Smith's 
Handbook. 



96 School-Bays of Eminent Men. 

for wliich purpose the celebrated George Buchanan was appoin- 
ted to the office of preceptor. Buchanan was sixty years older 
than the King of Scots: his faculties had, however, suffered 
nothing by age, for his great work, the History of Scotland, was 
the product of a still later period of his life. But his original 
faults of temper appear to have been aggravated into habitual 
moroseness ; " that contempt also for the artificial distinctions of 
rank and fortune, so natural to men conscious of having elevated 
themselves from obscurity by the unaided force of native genius, 
was in Buchanan degenerated into a species of republican cyni- 
cism which often impelled him to trample on the pride of kings 
with greater pride than their own." It is said that he once took 
upon him to severely whip the young monarch, for disturbing 
him at his studies ; and his general treatment of James may be 
collected from a speech used by him concerning a person in high 
place about him in England, "that he ever trembled at his 
approach, he minded him so of his pedagogue." The tutor, on 
his part, confessed a failure when, being reproached for making 
the King a pedant, he replied, that it was the best he could make 
of him. James, nevertheless, under the guidance of so able a 
master, accumulated a mass of erudition which formed through 
life his pride and boast; but his judgment was feeble, and his 
temperament cold. The most accomplished Latin poet and 
scholar of the age was unable to refine or elevate his taste ; to 
inspire him with due respect for the public will, or warm his 
bosom with the sentiments of a patriot King; although with the 
latter view Buchanan wrote for James, then in his fourteenth 
year, a learned Latin dialogue concerning the Constitution of 
Scotland. Notwithstanding Buchanan addressed this to his pupil 
as a testimony of his affection, he must have made himself rather 
an object of awe than of love ; or he (James) would have pre- 
served so much respect for one of the first literary characters in 
Europe, and the founder of his own erudition, as neither to have 
suffered him to die in penury, nor to receive interment at the 
cost of the city of Edinburgh, which charged itself with this hon- 
orable burthen. 

During the civil wars which agitated Scotland under the suc- 
cessive regencies of the Earls of Murray, Lenox, Mar, and 
Morton, the royal minor James remained tranquil and secluded 
in Stirling Castle ; but in 1577, the Earls of Athol and Argyle 
succeeded in depriving Morton of the regency, and, gaining 
access to the young king, they persuaded him, then in his twelfth 
year, to take into his own hands the administration of the country. 
Morton shortly after repossessed himself of Stirling Castle, 
and of the custody of James's person ; yet a parliament assem- 



Progress of Education. 97 

bled in 1578, had the absurdity to confirm the king's premature 
assumption of manhood. Here the interest of James's educa- 
tional tutelage may be said to cease. He had been altogether 
carefully instructed by Buchanan ; and he wrote several works, 
both in prose and poetry, which, though now censured as pedan- 
tic, show him to have possessed a cultivated mind, and a style 
quite equal to the generality of writers of his time. He also 
aspired to theological learning ; for before he was twenty years 
of age, he wrote a Latin commentary on the Apocalypse ; and 
he founded a seminary for champions in the Romish controversy 
upon the site of the present Chelsea Hospital. His amusements, 
however, were of the coarsest description ; cock-fighting, bull, 
bear, and lion baiting, and the more ordinary field sports, occupy- 
ing his time to the utter neglect of public affairs. But, he was 
a patron of learning ; and it ought not to be forgotten that the 
authorized translation of the Bible was commenced and com- 
pleted under his auspices. Shortly after he had succeeded to 
the English throne, at a conference of divines held at Hampton 
Court, in 1603, James expressed a strong opinion on the imper- 
fections of the existing translations of the Scriptures. " I wish," 
said he, " some special pains were taken for a uniform transla- 
tion, which should be done by the best learned in both universi- 
ties, then revised by the bishops, presented to the privy council, 
and lastly ratified by royal authority, to be read in the whole 
church, and no other." Out of this speech of the king's arose 
the present English Bible, wdiich has now for nearly 250 years 
been the only Bible read in the English church, and is also the 
Bible universally used in dissenting communities. 

EDUCATION OF PRINCE HENRY. 

James I. married, in 1590, Anne of Denmark, by whom he 
had a family of seven children. Prince Henry Frederic, the 
eldest son, was born at Stirling Castle in 1594. His father com- 
mitted his infancy to the joint care of the Earl of Mar and the 
Countess his mother, who had been the king's own nurse : both 
were persons of merit, and were loved by their young charge, 
although the countess is said to have been far from over-indulgent. 
Neither James nor his queen desired that their children should 
receive education under their own eyes, or be domesticated 
beneath the same roof with themselves. In consequence, the 
younger children were hoarded out in the families of different 
noblemen ; whilst for the heir-apparent a separate establishment 
was formed, almost immediately on his quitting his nurse. His 
principal attendants were the Earl of Mar as governor, and Sir 
David Murray as gentleman of the bedchamber. At five or six 
7 



98 School-Bays of Eminent Men. 

years of age, the prince was placed under the tuition of Adam 
Newton, a good scholar, Avho afterward translated into Latin 
the King's discourse against Vorstms. About the same time 
James composed his Basilicon Doron, a collection of precepts 
and maxims in religion, in morals, and in the arts of government, 
addressed to Prince Henry, nominally for his instruction, but 
more truly for displaying James's skill in common-places, and 
uttering to the world his maxims of state. Upon the little prince 
arriving in England, the king created him a Knight of the Garter, 
at nine years of age, and settled him in one of the royal palaces, 
his household consisting of seventy servants, which the King 
doubled next year; and in 1610, the establishment of the prince 
had increased to 426 persons, besides artificers under the man- 
a^-ement of Inigo Jones, comptroller of the works.* 

Different factions now strove to gain the ear and heart of the 
voung prince. A Scotch officer being directed to procure for his 
highness a suit of armor, exj^ressed his hopes that he would fol- 
low the footsteps of Edward the Black Prince, and added, " I 
shall bring with me also the book of Froissart, who will show 
3''0ur grace how the wars were led in those days ; and w^hat just 
title and right your grace's father has beyond the seas." The 
queen told him she hoped one day to see him conquer France, 
like another Henry Y. To learning the prince does not appear 
to have been greatly inclined, but he remained true to the Prot- 
estant faith ; and the martial spirit thus fostered in him had the 
effect of rendering him a warm admirer of Henry IV. of France, 
and by degrees of drawing him strongly within the influence of 
this distinguished prince and warrior. 

" None of his pleasures," writes M. Broderie, in 1606, " savour in the least of a child. 
He is a particular lover of horses, and what belongs to them ; but is not fond of hunting. 
He is fond of playing at tennis, and at another Scotch diversion very like mall ; but always 
with persons elder than himself, as if he despised those of his own age. He studies two 
hours in the day, and employs the rest of his time in tossing the pike, or leaping, or 
shooting with the bow, or throwing the bar, or vaulting, or some other exercise of that 
kind; and he is never idle." — Bircli's Life. 



*No. 17, Fleet-street, is a reputed residence of Prince Henry, but not mentioned as such 
by his biographers. The first-floor front-room has, however, an enriched plaster ceiling, 
iDscribed P. (triple plume) H., which, with part of the carved wainscoting, denote the 
house to be of the time of James I. Here Mrs. Salmon exhibited her wax-work, and .«he was, 
probably, the first who styled the place " once the Palace of Henry Prince of Wales, son 
of King James I.;" a statement, perhaps, as authentic as the present inscription on the 
house — "Formerly the Palace of Henry VIII. and Cardinal Wolsey." The size of the 
dwelling does not correspond with the magnificent household of Prince Henry ; it is more 
probable that the ceiling was decorated with the royal plume and initials by one of the 
Prince's retainers, which courtly compliment was formerly not rare. 

Near Leicester-fields, upon the site of Gerrard-street, Soho, was formerly a piece of 
ground walled in by Prince Henry, for the exercise of arms ; here were an armory and 
a well-furnished library of books relating to feats of arms, chivalry, military affairs, 
encamping, fortification, in all languages, and kept by a learned librarian. It was called 
the Artillery Ground ; and after the Restoration of Charles 11. it was bought by Lord 
Gerard, and let for building, about 1677. — Curiosities of London. 



Progress of Education, 99 

Henry patronized that excellent man and preacher, Joseph 
Hall, afterward Bishop of Norwich. Having heard two of the 
sermons, the prince, then in his fourteenth year, appointed him 
one of his chaplains. Henry was early impressed with a strong 
sense of religion; and besides exhibiting strict religious obser- 
vance in his ow^n conduct, his youthful zeal ordered boxes to be 
kept at his three houses, to receive the penalties on profane 
swearing, which he commanded to be strictly levied on his house- 
hold; and he is stated to have once declared that "all the plea- 
sure in the world is not worth an oath." He took early interest 
in naval matters ; frequently visited the dockyards ; took great 
delight in a model ship which was constructed for him, and 
received Phineas Pett, the builder, into his special favor and 
protection. He greatly admired the genius of Sir "Walter 
Raleigh, and more than once exclaimed that " no king but his 
father would keep such a bird in a cage." Henry died in his 
nineteenth year : the grief of the people was unbounded : the 
young and adventurous bew^ailed a prince supposed to resemble 
Henry V., that favorite of English story, equally in his outward 
form and in the nobler qualities of his mind ; and the zealous 
party in religion mourned a stanch defender of the Protestant 
church. The two universities produced sermons, Latin orations, 
and collections of verses, in honor of the lamented Prince Henry. 
Most of the cotemporary poets, with the very remarkable excep- 
tion of Ben Jonson — the court poet, though not yet the laure- 
ate — hastened to scatter their voluntary offerings round the 
tomb of Henry. Chapman, the translator of Homer, bewailed in 
the prince his " most dear and heroical patron." Webster and 
Heywood each produced an elegy. William Browne, who pub- 
lished in the following year Britannia's Pastorals, first exercised 
his muse on the loss of Henry ; and Dr. Donne, known chiefly 
by his satires, in a tender elegy commemorated the virtue of this 
lamented prince. His handsome person and knightly figure are 
vividly portrayed in the print engraved by Crispin Pass. 

LITERATURE OF THE REIGN OF JA3IES THE FIRST. 

The best learning of this age was derived from the study of 
the ancients ; which, however, tended to introduce the pedantry 
and forced conceits and sentiments so prevalent in the writing of 
the time. The English language, after having been improved by 
Spenser and Sir Philip Sidney, and rendered almost perfect by 
Richard Hooker, in his immortal books of the Ecclesiastical 
Polity, had begun, after the middle of the reign of Elizabeth, to 
lose some of its native vigor, being molded by every writer ac- 
cording to his own fancy. The introduction of the Latin idiom, 



100 School-Baiis of Eminent Men. 

which had caused many mnovations in the last reign, greatly in- 
creased under James I., who was himself infected with the bad 
taste of his time. The prose composition has been considered to 
be more imperfect than the verse ; the purest language spoken in 
the Courts of Elizabeth and James I. is thought to have differed 
but little from the best of modern times ; wherefore the unpolished 
and Latinized prose of the seventeenth century has been attrib- 
uted to the station in society of the authors. But the English 
tongue could boast of Shakspeare, Ben Jonson, and Edward 
Fairfax, the translator of Tasso ; Sir John Harrington, who 
rendered Ariosto into British verse ; Dr. Donne, whose wit and 
deep feeling, thrown into his lines, are almost entirely obscured 
by an uncommonly harsh and uncouth expression ; Dr. Joseph 
Hall, Bishop of Exeter, the first author of satires in English ; 
Sir Walter Raleigh; Beaumont and Fletcher; Owen Feltham 
and Lord Bacon. The last was one of the greatest glories of 
the literature of this period. He wrote more in Latin than in 
English, and perhaps had more strength than elegance in either ; 
but he is rendered famous by the great variety of his talents as 
a public speaker, a statesman, a wit, a courtier, an author, a phi- 
losopher, and a companion. 

In this reign, in 1608, the great Lord Clarendon, Chancellor 
to Charles IL, was born at Dinton, near Salisbury, where he 
was first instructed by the clergyman of the parish, who was also 
a schoolmaster, and afterward at Magdalen College, Oxford, 
where he entered at the age of thirteen : we obtain a glimpse of 
the manners of the students at the University at that period from 
Clarendon's quitting Oxford " in consequence of the habit of 
hard drinking which then prevailed there." 

In the same year, 1608, was born John Milton; and in 1612, 
Samuel Butler ; of whose school-days some account will be given 
in a future page. 

BURTON AND SELDEN. 

To the scholars of this period belongs Robert Burton, who 
wrote the Anatomy of Melancholy^ the favorite of the learned 
and witty, and beyond all other English authors, largely dealing 
in apt and original quotations. Burton was born at Lindley, in 
Leicestershire, in 1576, and was sent early to the free grammar- 
school of Sutton Coldfield, in Warwickshire, as he mentions in 
his Anatomy — in his will, he also states Nuneaton; probably he 
may have been at both schools. At the age of 17, he was ad- 
mitted a commoner at Brazen Nose College, Oxford, where he 
made considerable progress in logic and philosophy ; in 1599, he 
was elected student of Christchurch ; and about 1628, he be- 
came rector of Segrave, Wood describes him as — 



Progress of Education, 101 

" an exact mathematician, a curious calculator of nativities, a general-read scholar, a thor- 
ough-paced philologist, and one that understood the surveyiug of lands well. As he was 
by many accounted a severe student, a devourer of authors, a melancholy and humorous 
person, so by others who knew him well, a person of great honesty, plain dealing, and 
charity. I have heard some of the antients of Ohristchurch often say that his memory 
was very merry, facete, and juvenile ; and no man in his time did surpass him for his ready 
and dexterous interlarding his common discourses among them with verses from the poeta, 
or sentences from classical authors ; which, being then all the fashion in the University, 
made his company more acceptable." 

We gather from Burton's account of himself, that he aimed at 
a smattering in all ; that he had read many good books, but to 
little purpose, for want of a good method ; that all his treasure 
was in Minerva's tower ; that he lived a collegiate student, as 
Democritus in his garden, and led a monastic life, sequestered 
from the tumults and troubles of the world, but now and then 
walking abroad, to see the fashions, and look into the world. He 
was ah inordinate reader, and was liberally supplied with books 
from the Bodleian Library, to which and Christchurch Library 
he bequeathed his own books. 

John Selden, described as "an English gentleman of most 
extensive knowledge and prodigious learning," was born at Sal- 
vington, in Sussex, in 1584 : he was sent early to the prebendal 
free school at Chichester, which had been refounded by Bishop 
Edward Story, about 1470; but the school is believed to be 
coeval with the cathedral. From Chichester, Selden was sent to 
Oxford. Antony a Wood says : " he was an exact critic and 
philologist, an excellent Grecian, Latinist, and historian, and, 
above all, a profound antiquary." 

By his works Selden acquired the esteem and friendship of 
Camden, Spelman, Sir Robert Cotton, Ben Jonson, Browne, and 
also of Drayton, to whose Polyolbion he furnished notes. By 
Milton he is spoken of as " the chief of learned men reputed in 
this land." " He was of so stupendous a learning," says Lord 
Clarendon, " in all kinds and in all languages (as may appear in 
his excellent writings), that a man would have thought he had 
been entirely conversant among books, and had never spent an 
hour but in reading and writing ; yet his humanity, affability, 
and courtesy were such, that he would have been thought to 
have been bred in the best courts, but that his good nature, char- 
ity, and delight in doing good exceeded that breeding." His 
amanuensis for twenty years enjoyed the opportunity of hearing 
his employer's discourse, and was in the habit of faithfully com- 
mitting '-the excellent things that usually fell from him;" which 
were subsequently published as. Selden's Table Talk. 

THOMAS fuller's "SCHOOLMASTER." 

The witty Thomas Fuller, one of the most original writers in 
our language, was born in 1608, at Aldwinckle, in Northampton- 



102 School-Bays of Eminent Men. 

shire ; his father being rector of St. Peter's, in that village. His 
< early education was conducted chiefly under the paternal roof, 
and so successfully, that at twelve years of age he was sent to 
Queen's College, Cambridge. At the age of sixteen he took his 
degree of B.A., and that of M.A. in 1628.* He soon became 
an extremely popular preacher, and preferment came rapidly. 
Among his numerous works, Fuller has portrayed " The Good 
Schoolmaster," of whose office he says : " There is scarce any 
profession in the commonwealth more necessary, which is so 
slightly performed. The reasons whereof I conceive to be these : 
First, young scholars make this calling their refuge ; yea, per- 
chance, before they have taken any degree in the University, 
commence schoolmasters in the country ; as if nothing else were 
required to set up this profession, but only a rod and a ferula. 
Secondly, others, who are able, use it only as a passage to better 
preferment ; to patch the rents in their present fortune, till they 
can provide a new one, and betake themselves to some more 
gainful calling. Thirdly, they are disheartened from doing their 
best, with the miserable reward which in some places they re- 
ceive, being masters to the children, and slaves to their parents. 
Fourthly, being grown rich, they grow negligent ; and scorn to 
touch the school, but by the proxy of an usher. 

" Some men had as lieve be school-boys as school-masters — to 
be tied to the school, as Cooper's Dictionary and Scapula's Lex- 
icon are chained to the desk therein ; and though great scholars, 
and skillful in other arts, are bunglers in this. 

" But a good schoolmaster studieth his scholars' natures as care- 
fully as they their books, and ranks their dispositions into several 
forms. He refuseth cockering mothers who proffer him money 
to purchase their sons' exemption from his rod, and scorns the 
late custom in some places of commuting whipping into money, 
and ransoming boys from the rod at a set price." These are in- 
teresting glimpses of schoolmasters' practice and the state of 
common education in the seventeenth century. 

THE CHARTER-HOUSE SCHOOL FOUNDED. 

In one of the secluded corners of the City of London, and 

* Fuller's power of memory was very great. It is said that he could " repeat five hun- 
dred strange words after once hearing them, and could make use of a sermon verbatim^ 
under the like circumstances." Still further, it is said that he undertook, in passing from 
Temple Bar to the extremity of Cheapside, to tell, at his return, every sign as it stood in 
order on both sides of the way (repeating them either backward or forward), and that he 
performed the task exactly. This is prettj' well, considering that in that day every shop 
had its sign. Of his method of composition, it is said that he was in " the habit of writing 
the first words of every line near the margin down to the foot of the paper, and, that then 
beginning again, he filled up the vacuities exactly, without spaces, interlineations, or con- 
tractions ; and that he " would so connect the ends and beginnings that the sense would 
appear as complete as if it had been written in a continued series, after the ordinary 
manner." 



Progress of Education. 103 

not far from Smithfield, which was once the Town Green, was 
founded by the chivalrous Sir WaUer Manny, in the 14th cen- 
tury, a monastery of Carthusians, in which the founder was 
buried the year after its completion. Here Sir Thomas More 
gave himself to devotion and prayer for about four years. The 
monastery, after the surrender, had several noble owners ; and 
in 1611 was sold to Thomas Sutton, the wealthy merchant, who 
endowed it as " the Hospital of King James ; though it is now 
known as the Charter-house, corrupted from Chartreux, the 
place where the order of Carthusians was originally instituted. 
Sutton designed the foundation as a collegiate asylum for the 
aged ; a school-house for the young ; and a chapel ; but he died 
before he had perfected his good work, " the greatest gift in Eng- 
land, either in protestant or catholic times, ever bestowed by any 
individual." The foundation was, however, soon after completed. 
Few portions of the monastery buildings remain ; but the wooden 
gates are those over which the mangled body of the last prior 
was placed by the spoilers at the Dissolution. 

Upon the foundation are maintained 80 pensioners, or poor 
brethren, who " live together in collegiate style," and are nomi- 
nated in the same manner as the 40 foundation scholars, " Gown 
Boys," by the Governors, who present in rotation. The founda- 
tion scholars receive their board, education, and clothing free of 
expense, and enjoy the right of election to an unlimited number 
of exhibitions, of from 80/. to 100/. a-year, at either university. 
Others receive donations toward placing them out in life. The 
foundation scholars also enjoy the preference over the »Scholars 
of presentation to valuable church preferment in the gift of the 
Governors. The number of scholars is about 180. 

For the establishment of a school for forty boys, the sum of 5000i. vras bequeathed ex- 
pressly ; and a sum of 40/. was limited to be paid with every boy, either to advance him in 
college, or as an apprentice fee in trade. It is rather significant of the inadequacy of that 
sum for the purpose, and of the greatly reduced value of money, that we find the exhibi- 
tions to college enlarged by the governors to more than 40?. a-year for four years ; and also 
that the amount of 40^ as an apprentice premium was whoU}' useless and insufiicient : so 
much so, that those premiums have been discontinued, no youth having been apprenticed 
from the school since John P. Kemble was bound apprentice to his uncle, the comedian, 
to learn the histrionic art I In truth, the 40?. in 1611, as compared to the same nominal 
amount of our currency, may be estimated at 400/., or ten times the sum. This calculation 
ought to be borne out in all the details, for most assuredly the value of the estates has in- 
creased tenfold; and yet the gross rental, which was, in the year 1691, 5391Z., averaged for 
the last six years less than 21,000?., representing an increase Uttle exceeding three times 
that amount I — The Builder^ No. 631. 

The Great Hall, built about the middle of the sixteenth cen- 
tury, has for its west wall part of the conventual edifice. It 
has a screen, music gallery, sculptured chimney-piece, and lan- 
tern in the roof; and here hangs a noble portrait of the founder, 
Sutton. In this apartment is celebrated the anniversary of the 



104 School-Days of Eminent Men, 

foundation, on December 12; when is always sung the old 
Carthusian melody, with this chorus : 

" Then blessed be the memory 
Of good old Thomas Sutton; 
Who gave us lodging — learning. 
And he gave us beef and mutton " 

The present school-house is a modern brick building (1803) ; 
the large central door is surrounded by stones bearing the names 
of former Carthusians. There are two play-greens, — for the 
'' Uppers " and " Unders ;" and by the wall of the ancient 
monastery is a gravel walk upon the site of a range of cloisters. 
The Master has his flower-garden, wuth its fountain ; there are 
courts for tennis, a favorite game among Carthusians ; a "wilder- 
ness" of fine trees, intersected by grass and gravel walks ; the 
cloisters, where football and hookey are played ; the old school, 
its ceiling charged with armorial shields; the great kitchen, prob- 
ably the banqueting-hall of the old priory ; the chapel where 
Sutton lies, beneath a sumptuous tomb ; and lastly, the burial- 
ground for the poor brethren. There are besides solitary courts, 
remains of cloisters and cells, and old doorways and window- 
cases, which assert the antiquity of the place ; and the governors 
have wisely extended the great object of the founder by the 
grant of a piece of ground, where a church and schools for the 
poorer classes have been built. 

Among the eminent Schoolmasters of Charter-house is the Rev. Andrew Tooke, author 
of " The Pantheon." Among the eminent Scholars : Richard Crashaw, the poet, author 
of " Steps to the Temple ;" Isaac Barrow, the divine — he was celebrated at school for his 
love of fighting ; Sir William Blackstone, author of the Commentaries; Joseph Addison 
and Richard Steele, scholars at the same time ; John AV'esley. the founder of the Wesley- 
ans ;* Lord Chief-Justice EUenborough ; Lord Liverpool, the Prime Minister; Bishop 
Monk; W.M.Thackeray; Sir C. L. Eastlake, P.R.A. The two eminent historians of Greece, 
Bishop Thirlwall and George Grote, Esq., were both together, in the same form, under Dr. 
Raine. — Abridged from, Cunningham^s Handbook of London. 

To the list will surely be added "OldPhlos." The pet name will be remembered by 
Carthusians, whose memories can go back some forty years or more. They will not have 
forgotten the gentle and thoughtful lad who used to stand looking on while others played, 
and whose general meditative manner procured for him the name of " Philosopher," sub- 
sequently diminished to " Phlos," and occasionally applied as "OldPhlos." That young 
and popular philosopher is the soldier at whose name the hearts of Englishmen beat with 
honest pride. "OldPhlos" of the Charter-house is Havelock, the hero of Cawnpore. — 
AtfientBum. 

Among the Poor Brethren: Elkanah Settle, the rival and antagonist of Dry den ; John 
Bagford, the antiquary, who left a large collection of materials for the history of Printing ; 
Isaac de Groot, by several descents the nephew of Hugo Grotius — he was admitted at the 
earnest intercession of Dr. Johnson ; and Alexander Maclean, Johnson's assistant hi his 
Dictiouary. 

EDUCATION OF CHARLES I. 

Little is recorded of the early life of this ill-fated prince. 
He was the second son of James VI. of Scotland, by Anne of 
Denmark, his queen, and was born at the royal castle of Dun- 

* Wesley imputed his after-health and long life to the strict obedience with which he per- 
formed an injunction of his father's, that he should run round the Charter-house playing- 
green three times every morning. 



Progress of Education, 105 

fermline, in Scotland, in 1600. At three years of age he was 
committed to the care of the lady of Sir George Gary, and under 
her management the weakly constitution of the young prince 
improved ; it became firm and vigorous when he had attained to 
manhood, and he is said to have shown great activity in his field 
sports and exercises ; his stature, however, remained below the 
middle size, and the deformity of his childhood was never entirely 
corrected.* Another natural defect under which he labored was 
an impediment in utterance, which through life generally mani- 
fested itself whenever Charles became earnest in discourse, and 
which had, doubtless, a great share in producing the taciturnity 
for which he was remarkable. On completing his fourth year, 
Charles was brought to England ; on Twelfth Day, 1 605, he 
was created a Knight of the Bath, with twelve companions, 
and afterward solemnly invested with the dignity of Duke 
of York. 

Miss Aikin searched in vain among cotemporary letters and 
memoirs for early anecdotes of this prince. His habits were 
sedentary and studious, and were much ridiculed by his elder 
brother Henry, whose death rendered Charles heir-apparent to 
the British crown ; but he appears still to have lived in seclu- 
sion. An encomiastic biographer attributes his supposed obsti- 
nacy and suspected perverseness to the above natural defects. 
An old Scottish lady, his nurse, used to affirm that he was of a 
very evil nature in his infancy, and the lady who afterward took 
charge of him stated that he was "bej^ond measure willful and 
unthankful." These faults of temper were, however, checked as 
Charles grew up. His reserve saved him from excesses : he was 
moderate in his expenses, prudent in his conduct, and regular at 
his devotions ; he was industrious, and his pursuits and tastes 
were of an elegant turn. King James sought to inspire his son 
with his own love of learning. At the premature age of ten, 
Charles was made to go through the form of holding a public 
disputation in theology, and he actually became acquainted with 
the polemics of the time. His own inclinations, however, led 
him to the study of mechanics and the fine arts. An attached 
adherent has thus described the young prince's accomplish- 
ments : 

With any artist or good mechanic, traveler, or scholar, he would discourse freely ; and 
as he was commonly improved by them, so he often gave light to them in their own art or 
knowledge. For there were few gentlemen in the world that knew more of useful or nec- 
essary learning than this prince did ; and yet his proportion of books was but small, hav- 
ing, like Francis the First of France, learned more by the ear than by study Uis 

exertions were manly ; for he rid the great horse very well ; and on the little saddle he was 

* In the fine equestrian portrait of Charles I., by Vandyke, now at Hampton Court, a 
curvature at the knee is distinctly visible. 



106 School-Days of Eminent Men. 

not only adroit, but a laborious hunter or fieldsman, and they were wont to say of him, that 
he never failed to do any of his exercises artificially, but not very gracefully. 

A collection of antiques (says Miss Aikin), and other objects 
of curiosity bequeathed to him by Prince Henry, appears first 
to have directed his attention toward painting and sculpture ; 
the taste was afterward fostered in him by the Duke of Buck- 
ingham, and his merits as a connoisseur and patron of art and 
artists were unquestionably great. 

At the age of sixteen, Charles was solemnly created Prince of 
"Wales ; and his household was formed, almost all the officers 
being Scotch. Mr. Murray, his tutor, who had been about him 
from his sixth year, was also a Scotsman and a Presbyterian. 
These circumstances led to many fears and jealousies, and being 
represented to the king, he appointed Dr. Hakewill, an eminent 
divine, of Oxford, as Charles's religious instructor ; who, endeav- 
oring to dissuade the prince from his marriage with the Spanish 
Infanta, a Catholic princess, was imprisoned, deprived of his 
office about Charles, and for ever debarred of further preferment ; 
but the provostship of Eton was afterward conferred upon him 
in recompense for his long service. 

The prince's "exercises of religion were most exemplary : for every morning early, and 
evening not very late, singly and alone, he spent some time in private meditation, and he 
never failed, before he sat down to dinner, to have part of the liturgy read to him and his 
servants ; and when any young nobleman or gentleman who was going to travel, came to 
kiss his hand, he cheerfully would give him some good counsel leading to moral virtue, 
especially a good conversation." 

Charles was certainly one of the most elegant and forcible 
English writers of his time, and a great friend to the fine arts ; 
and to him we owe the first formation of the royal collection of 
pictures now in the palaces. Charles's works consist chiefly of 
letters, and a few state papers, and of the famous Eikon BasiliJce, 
which first appeared immediately after the death of the king :* 
his claim to the authorship was much disputed ; but Dr. Ch. 
"Wordsworth, in an octavo volume of patient research, is con- 
sidered to have proved the book to have been the production of 
Charles ; Dr. Wordsworth states that Hooker, the divine Herbert, 
and Spenser were the king's favorite reading ; and, " the closet 
companion of his solitudes, William Shakspeare." 

LITERATURE AND LEARNING AT THE ACCESSION OF CHARLES I. 

At the period of Charles's accession, the cumbrous erudition 

* A curious piece of evidence of the publication of this work is recorded in an Historical 
Account of Mr. John Toland, 1722, who, at an auction of books at Button's Coffee-house, 
in Russell-street, Covent Garden, bought Mr. Toland's A^nyntor ; or, A Defence of Milton's 
Life, in page 120 whereof was written by one Dr. Thompson the following memorandum ; 
'< Mr. John Wilson, barrister-atlaw, author of the Vindicatio7i of Icon Basilike, against 
Milton, told me in person that he bought the Icon Basilike, Jan. 31, 1648, for ten shillings, 
the very next day after the king was beheaded I Fra. Thompson, D.D. 



Progress of Education, 107 

of scolarship began to be laid aside, and general information 
was more prized than what is technically called learning. Books 
of voyages and travels were printed in considerable numbers, and 
read with avidity. Hakluyt published his collection of voyages ; 
he was appointed lecturer on geography at Oxford, and was the 
first to introduce maps, globes, and spheres into the common 
schools. Purchas published his Pilgrimage ; George Sandys, 
his Travels and Researches on Classical Antiquities ; Knowles, 
his History of the Turks; Camden, his Annals of Queen 
Elizabeth ; Speed, his Chronicle ; Lord Herbert of Cherbury, 
his Life of Henry YIIL; and Lord Bacon, his Life of 
Henry YII. 

Among the earliest results of the intellectual progress of the 
age was an extension of the established plan of education, as far, 
at least, as regarded youths of family and fortune. Peacham's 
" Complete Gentleman," addressed to his pupil, Thomas Howard, 
fourth son of the Earl of Arundel, presents us with a summary 
of the requirements at this time necessary to a man of rank. 
He stigmatises the class of schoolmasters, so often ignorant and 
incompetent, and generally rough and even barbarous to their 
pupils, who were "pulled by the ears, lashed over the face, 
beaten about the head with the great end of the rod, smitten 
upon the lips for every slight offence, with the ferula," etc. 
Domestic tutors he represents to have been still worse ; ignorant 
and mean-spirited men, engaged by sordid persons at a pitiful 
salary, and encouraged to expect their reward in some family 
living, to be bestowed as the meed of their servility and false 
indulgence. Peacham blames parents for sending to the univer- 
sities "young things of twelve, thirteen, or fourteen, that have 
no more care than to expect the carrier, and where to sup on 
Fridays and fasting nights ; no further thought of study than to 
trim up their studies with pictures, and to place the fairest books 
in open view, which, poor lads, they scarce ever open, or under- 
stand not." . . . "Other fathers, if they perceive any wildness 
or unstayedness in their children," hastily despairing of their 
" ever proving scholars or fit for anything else, to mend the 
matter, send them either to the court to serve as pages, or into 
France and Italy to see fashions and mend their manners, where 
they become ten times worse." We gather from Peacham's 
work, that geography, with the elements of astronomy, geometry, 
and mechanics ; the study of antiquities, comprising mythology 
and the knowledge of medals, and the theory and practice of the 
arts of design, — were parts of learning now almost for the first 
time enumerated amongst the becoming accomplishments of an 
English gentleman. 



108 School-Bays of Eminent Men. 

Lord Herbert of Cherbury has sketched a plan of education 
still more extensive, being modeled apparently on his own 
acquirements. He advises that after mastering the grammar, 
the pupil should proceed with Greek, in preference to Latin, on 
account of the excellence of the writers of that language " in all 
learning." Geography and the state and manners of nations he 
would have thoroughly learned, and the use of the celestial globe ; 
judicial astrology for general predictions only, as having no 
power to foreshow particular events ; arithmetic and geometry 
" in some good bold measure ;" and rhetoric and oratory. Like 
Bacon, he seems much addicted to medical empiricism, and 
enjoins the study of drugs and antidotaries. He speaks of 
botany as a pursuit highly becoming a gentleman, and judiciously 
recommends anatomy as a remedy against atheism.* He recom- 
mends riding the great horse and fencing ; but disapproves of 
"riding running horses, because there is much cheating in that 
kind, and hunting takes up too much time." "Dicing and card- 
ing" he condemns. 

Female education, in the higher class, shared in the advance- 
ment. Li classical learning, the reign of James supplied no 
rivals to the daughters of Sir Anthony Cooke, to Lady Jane 
Grey, or Queen Elizabeth ; but Lady Anne Clifford received 
instructions from Daniel in history, poetry, and general literature ; 
Lucy Harrington, afterward Countess of Bedford, was a med- 
alist and Latin scholar ; Lady "Wroth, born a Sidney, was both 
herself a writer and a patroness of the learned. Mrs. Hutchin- 
son, whose admirable Memoirs of her husband bespeak a highly 
cultivated mind, informs us that at about the age of seven, she 
"had at one time eight tutors in several qualities — languages, 
music, drawing, writing, and needle-work." f 

A GOOD EDUCATION IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 

"To learn to read and write" appears to have been the sum 
of good Education two centuries and a half since. Dekker, a 
dramatist at the beginning of the seventeenth century, however, 
makes a man of substance who is asked, " Can you read and 
write, then?" reply, "As most of your gentlemen do — my bond 
has been taken with my mark at it." Public records of the 
days of Elizabeth and James L show that some of the men in 
authority — worshipful burgesses and aldermen — as commonly 
made their marks as others signed their names in fair Italian or 
German hands. There must be a general reason for this, besides 

* Memoirs of the Court of King Charles the First. By Lucy Aikin. 
tibid. 



Progress of Education. 109 

the particular aptitude, or the particular unfitness, of the indi- 
vidual for acquiring the rudiments of learning. The reason is 
tolerably obvious. The endowed Grammar-schools which sur- 
vived the Reformation were few in number, and were not 
established upon any broad principles of diffusing education 
throughout the land. "Where they were established by Royal 
charter, or by the zeal of individuals, they did their work of 
keeping the sources of knowledge open to a portion of the 
people ; some of the children of the middle classes availed them- 
selves of their advantages, and could write a Latin letter as Avell 
as make a fair ledger entry; others, and there was no conse- 
quent derogation from their respectability, kept their accounts 
by the score and the tally, and left the Latin to the curate. The 
learning of the middle classes was then won by them as a prize 
in a lottery. 

Now, at the end of two centuries, we find the same inequality 
still prevailing amongst what we term the lower classes. The 
old test of the spread of the rudiments of knowledge, in the 
exhibition of the ability to write, existed to our time. The 
Report of the Registrar- General for the year 1846 says: "Per- 
sons when they are married, are required to sign the marriage 
register; if they cannot write their names, they sign with a 
mark: the result has hitherto been, that nearly one man in three, 
and one woman in two married, sign with marks." 

SIR MATTHEW HALe's PLAN OF INSTRUCTION. 

The great lawyer of this and the succeeding reign. Sir Matthew 
Hale, in his "Advice to his Grandchildren," and "Counsels of a 
Father," has left the following course of instruction for sons: 
Till eight, English reading only. From eight to sixteen, the 
grammar-school. Latin to be thoroughly learned, Greek more 
slightly. From sixteen to seventeen at the university, or under 
a tutor: more Latin, but chiefly arithmetic, geometry, and 
geodesy. From seventeen to nineteen or twenty, "logic, natural 
philosophy, and metaphysics, according to the ordinary discipline 
of the university;" but after "some systems or late topical or 
philosophical tracts," the pupil to be chiefly exercised in Aris- 
totle. Afterward, should he follow no profession, yet to gain 
some knowledge of divinity, law, and physics, especially anatomy. 
Also of "husbandry, planting, and ordering of a country farm." 
For recreations, he advises "reading of history, mathematics, 
experimental philosophy, nature of trees, plants, or insects, 
mathematical observations, measuring land; nay, the more 
cleanly exercise of smithery, watchmaking, carpentry, joinery 
work of all kinds." 



110 School-Bays of Eminent Men. 



NEWSPAPERS INTRODUCED. 

The Newspaper, which has now existed in England for nearly 
two centuries and a quarter, has from the first proved an active 
element of civilization, instruction, and popular enlightenment; 
until it has finally been elevated into a " Fourth Estate." In 
former times, much of the intelligence conveyed in newspapers 
was crude and ill-told: but so gigantic have been the improve- 
ments in the newspaper of the present century, that it is not too 
much to regard it as a powerful adjunct, if not a direct agent, in 
the education of the people. Its origin, therefore, should be 
noticed in the present work. 

Until lately it was believed that the three numbers of " The 
English Mercurie," preserved in the British Museum, and pro- 
fessing to record the attack of the Spanish Armada, were the first 
newspapers printed in England ; upon the credit of which the 
invention was given to Lord Burleigh. In 1840, however, this 
"Mercurie" was proved to be a clumsy forgery.* Pamphlets 
containing foreign news began to be occasionally published 
during the reign of James I. The first of these news-pamphlets, 
published at regular intervals, appears to have been " The News 
of the Present Week," edited by Nathaniel Butter, which was 
started in 1622, in the early days of the Thirty Years' War, 
and was continued, in conformity with its title, as a weekly 
publication. 

But the English newspaper, properly so called, at least that 
containing domestic intelligence, commences with the Long 
Parliament. The earliest discovered is a few leaves, entitled 
"The Diurnal Occurrences, or Daily Proceedings of Both 
Houses, in. this great and happy Parliament, from the 3d of 
November, 1640, to the 3d of November, 1641." More than 
a hundred newspapers, with different titles, apf)ear to have 
been published between this date and the death of Charles 
I.; and upward of 80 others between that event and the 
Restoration. 

Where our modern newspapers begin, the series of our 
chroniclers closes, with Sir Richard Baker's " Chronicles of the 
Kings of England," — first published in 1641. It was several 
times reprinted, and was a great favorite with our ancestors for 
two or three succeeding generations ; but it has now lost all its 
interest, except for a few passages relating to the author's own 
time ; and Sir Richard and his Chronicle are now popularly 
remembered principally as the great historical authorities of 

*For the details of this discovery, see Popular Errors Explained and Illustrated, pp. 61-63. 



Progress of Education. Ill 

Addison's Sir Roger de Coverly. — (See Spectator, No. 
329.)* 

To conclude — the educational effect of Newspapers has re- 
sulted from the perusal of them encouraging and keeping alive 
the habit of reading ; for a newspaper is to the general reader 
far more attractive than a book — in fact, a man can read a news- 
paper when he cannot read anything else. He often finds, how- 
ever, that fully to understand the news of the day, he must have 
recourse to books — so difficult is it for educated persons, who 
now write in newspapers, to write with sufficient simplicity to be 
invariably understood by the uneducated, or rather the imper- 
fectly educated. It is, moreover, in chronicling the progress of 
our educational institutions — from the university to the ragged- 
school — and in the fearless advocacy of the great cause of pub- 
lic instruction and political rights — that the newspaper must be 
regarded as the most powerful aid to education. 

Milton's system of instruction. 

Of the educational movements of this period, the above was 
the most remarkable, inasmuch as it was grounded upon active 
experience. The education of John Milton, one of the great 
lights of this period, and himself " an actual schoolmaster," was 
conducted with great care. He was born Dec. 9, 1608, in 
Bread-street, Cheapside, where his father vras a scrivener, living 
at the sign of the Spread Eagle, the armorial ensign of his fam- 
ily. The poet was baptized in the adjoining church of Allhal- 
lows, where the register of his baptism is still preserved. He 
was first placed under a person of Puritan opinions, named 
Young, who was master of Jesus College, Cambridge, during the 
Protectorate. At fifteen he was sent, even then an accomplished 
scholar, to St. Paul's School, London, under Alexander Gill. 
From St. Paul's he proceeded to Christ's College, Cambridge, 
where, as the college register informs us, he was admitted, Feb. 
12, 1624. At the university he was distinguished for the pecu- 
liar excellence of his Latin verses, and, according to his own 
statement, he met with " more than ordinary favor and respect " 
during the seven years of his stay here. Dr. Johnson, however, 
" is ashamed to relate what he fears is true, that Milton was one 
of the last students in either university that suffered the public 
indignity of corporal correction," or flogging ; but there appears 

* During the time that Sidney Godolphin filled the oflBceof Lord High Treasurer, between 
the years 1701 and 1710, he occasionally Tisited his seat in Cornwall. No conveyances 
then proceeded regularly onward further west than Exeter ; but when certain masses of 
letters had accumulated, the whole were usually forwarded together by what was called 
" the Post." But the Lord High Treasurer engaged a weekly messenger from Exeter to 
bring his letters, dispatches, and the newspaper : and on the fixed day of the messenger's 
arrival, the gentlemen assembled at Godolphin House, from many miles round, to hear the 
newspaper read in the Great Hall. 



112 School-Days of Eminent Men. 

small reason to believe the fact. Milton was designed for 'the 
church, but he preferred a " blameless silence " to what he con- 
sidered " servitude and forswearing." At this time, in his twenty- 
first year, he had written his grand Hymn on the Nativity, any 
one verse of which was sufficient to show that a new and great 
light was about to rise on English poetry. In 1632 he retired 
from the university, having taken his degree of M.A., and went 
to his father's house at Horton, Bucks : here, during a residence 
of five years, he read over all the Greek and Latin classics, and 
here he wrote his Arcades, Comus, and Lycidas. In 1637, on 
the death of his mother, Milton traveled into Italy, during which 
journey he was introduced to Grotius, to Galileo, and to Tasso's 
patron, Manso. On Milton's return to England, he devoted him- 
self to the education of his nephews, John and Edward Phillips, 
at his house in Aldersgate-street, which was then "freer from 
noise than any other in London." Of Milton's system of teach- 
ing, we gather, from his letter to Mr. Hartlib, that the knowledge 
of words is best obtained in union with the knowledge of things ; 
that " language is but the instrument conveying to us things use- 
ful to be known." He looked upon the reading of good books 
as the best and only means of obtaining a knowledge of lan- 
guage, wherefore he protests against " the preposterous exaction 
of forcing the empty wits of children to compose themes, verses, 
and orations," as a way to obtain a knowledge of the language ; 
for he regards them as " the acts of ripest judgment, and the 
final work of a head filled by long reading and observing, with 
elegant maxims, and copious invention." He preferred physical 
studies to humane or moral studies ; but like Bacon, he protests 
against that method which starts from abstractions and conclu- 
sions of the intellect ; and he maintains that all true method 
must begin from the objects of sense. Possibly his protests 
against making logic and metaphysics the introduction to knowl- 
edge in the universities, when they ought to be the climax of 
knowledge, were more appropriate to his own day, when boys 
went to Cambridge or Oxford at 15 or 12, than to the present 
time. 

Milton wished his college to be both school and university : 
the studies, therefore, proceed in an ascending scale, from the 
elements of grammar to the highest science, as well as to the 
most practical pursuits. The younger boys are to be especially 
trained to a clear and distinct pronunciation, " as like as may be 
to the Italian." Books are to be given them like Cebes or Plu- 
tarch, which will " win them early to the love of virtue and true 
labor." In some hour of the day they are to be taught the rules 
of arithmetic and the elements of geometry. The evenings are 



Progress of Education, 113 

to be taken up "with the easy grounds of reh'gion, and the study 
of Scripture." In the next stage they begin to study books on 
agriculture, Cato, Yarro, and Columella. These books will make 
them gradually masters of ordinary Latin prose, and will be at 
the same time " occasions of inciting and enabling them hereafter 
to improve the tillage of their country." The use of maps and 
globes is to be learnt from modern authors ; but Greek is to be 
studied as soon as the grammar is learnt, in the " historical phy- 
siology of Aristotle and Theophrastus." Latin and Greek authors 
together are to teach the principles of arithmetic, geometry, 
astronomy, and geography. Instruction in architecture, fortifi- 
cation, and engineering follows. In natural philosophy, we 
ascend through the history of meteor?, nnnerals, plants and liv- 
ing creatures, to anatomy. Anatomy leads on to the study of 
medicine. Milton would have us always conversant with facts 
rather than wath names. He aims at the useful as directly as 
the most professed utilitarian. The pupils are to have " the 
helpful experiences of hunters, fowlers, fishermen, shepherds, 
gardeners, and apothecaries " to assist them in their natural 
studies. These studies are to increase their interest in Hesiod, 
in Lucretius, and in the Georgics of Viro^il. 

In other words, the tendency of Milton's scheme was not so 
much to supply the then existing deficiency of instruction in the 
knowledge of nature, or to substitute some other treatise on such 
matters for the w^orks of Aristotle, but to exchange, as quietly 
as possible, and at the same time as decidedly, the merely formal 
routine of classical teaching for one in which the books that were 
read might arouse thought as well as exercise memory. His 
list comprises almost all the technical treatises extant in Latin 
and Greek, but excludes history and almost all the better known 
books of poetry, probably because he only intended it for chil- 
dren, and postponed such subjects for the instruction or amuse- 
ment of riper years. His aims were not those of a mathemati- 
cian or the philosopher of nature ; the state, not science, was in 
his view, and his object was to make, not good members of a 
university, but well-informed citizens. To this tend his eulogy 
of manly exercises and his plans for a common table, which 
could have had little importance in the eyes of a student. But 
the ends of Milton's system were as noble and as practicable as 
those of any that was ever conceived. 

Locke's system of education. 

Equally illustrative of the important business of Education 
are the writings of John Locke, one of the wisest and sincerest 
of Englishmen. He was born at Wrington, near Bristol, in 1 632. 
8 



114 ScJiool-Days of Eminent 3Ien. 

He was the eldest of two sons, and was educated with great care 
by his father, of whom he always spoke with the highest respect 
and affection. In the early part of his life, his father exacted 
the utmost deference from his son, but gradually treated him 
with less and less reserve, and when grown up, lived with him 
on terms of the most entire friendship ; so much so, that Locke 
mentioned the fact of his father having expressed his regret for 
giving way to his anger, and striking him once in his childhood 
when he did not deserve it. In a letter to a friend, written in 
the latter part of his life, Locke thus expresses himself on the 
conduct of a father toward his son : 

" That which I have often blamed as an indiscreet and dangerous practice in many 
fathers, viz, to be very indulgent to their children whilst they are little, and as they 
come to ripe years to lay great restraint upon them and live with greater reserve 
toward them, which usually produces an ill understanding between father and son, 
which cannot but be of bad consequences ; and I think fathers would generally do 
better, as their sons grow up, to take them into a nearer familiaritj', and live with 
them with as much freedom and friendship as their age and temper will allow." 

Locke was next placed at Westminster School, from which he 
was elected, in 1651, to Christchurch, Oxford. Here he ap- 
plied himself diligently to the study of classical literature ; and 
by the private reading of the works of Bacon and Descartes, he 
sought to nourish that philosophical spirit which he did not 
find in the philosophy of Aristotle, as taught in the school at 
Oxford. Though the writings of Descartes may have con- 
tributed, by their precision and scientific method, to the forma- 
tion of Locke's philosophical style, it was the principle of the 
Baconian method of observation which gave to the mind of 
Locke that taste for experimental studies which forms the 
basis of his own system, and probably determined his choice 
of a profession. He adopted that of medicine, which, how- 
ever, the weakness of his constitution prevented him from 
practicing. 

Of the writings of Locke, it must suffice for us to mention 
his great work. An Essay concerning Human Understanding, 
in which, setting aside the whole doctrine of innate notions 
and principles, the author traces all ideas to two sources, 
sensation and reflection ; treats at large of the nature of ideas, 
simple and complex ; of the operation of the human under- 
standing in forming, distinguishing, compounding, and associat- 
ing them ; of the manner in which words are applied as the 
representatives of ideas ; of the difficulties and obstructions in 
the search after truth, which arise from the imperfection of 
these signs ; and of the nature, reality, kinds, degrees, casual 
hindrances, and necessary limits of human knowledge. The in- 
fluence of this work, written in a plain, clear, expressive style, 



Progress of Education, 115 

upon the aims and habits of philosophical inquirers, as well as 
upon the minds of educated men in general, has been ex- 
tremely beneficial. Locke also wrote Thoughts upon Education, 
to which Rousseau is largely indebted for his Emile. The fol- 
lowing passage on the importance of Moral Education is very 
striking : 

" Under whose care soever a child is put to be taught during the tender and flexible 
years of his life, this is certain, it should be one who thinks Latin and languages the 
least part of education ; one -who, knowing how much yirtue and a well-tempered soul 
is to be preferred to any sort of learning or language, makes it his chief business to form 
the mind of his scholars, and give that a right disposition ; which, if once got, though all 
the rest should be neglected, would in due time produce all the rest ; and which, if it be 
not got, and settled so as to keep out ill and vicious habits — languages and sciences, and 
all the other accomplishments of education, will be to no purpose but to make the worse 
and more dangerous man.' ' 

GRAMMAR-SCHOOLS IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 

John Aubrey, the Wiltshire antiquary, has left this picture-in- 
little of the public schools of his time : 

" Before the Reformation, youth were generally taught Latin 
in the monasteries, and young women had their education not at 
Hackney, as now, 1678, but at nunneries, where they learnt 
needle-work, confectionary, surgery, physic (apothecaries and 
surgeons being at that time very rare), writing, drawing, etc. 
Old Jacquar, now living, has often seen from his house the nuns 
of St. Mary Kington, in Wilts, coming forth into the Nymph 
Hay with their rocks and wheels to spin, sometimes to the num- 
ber of threescore and ten, all whom were not nuns, but young 

girls sent there for education." " The gentry and 

citizens had little learning of any kind, and their way of breed- 
ing up children was suitable to the rest. They were as severe 
to their children as their schoolmasters, and their schoolmasters 
as the masters of the House of Correction : the child perfectly 
loathed the sight of his parents as the slave his torture. Gen- 
tlemen of thirty and forty years old were made to stand like 
mutes and fools bareheaded before their parents ; and the daugh- 
ters (grown women) were to stand at the cupboard-side during 
the whole time of their proud mother's visits, unless (as the 
fashion was) leave was desired forsooth that a cushion should be 
given them to kneel upon, brought them by the serving-man, 
after they had done penance by standing. The boys had their 
foreheads turned up and stiffened by spittle." 

INFLUENCE OF THE WRITINGS OF LORD BACON. 

" Everything relating to the state of the natural sciences at 
this period," says Dr. Vaughan, " may be found in the writings 
of Bacon. It was reserved to the genius of that extraordinary 
man to direct the scientific minds not only of his country but of 



116 Scliool-Bays of Eminent Men, 

Christendom, into the true path of knowledge ; to call the atten- 
tion of men from metaphysical abstraction to the facts of nature ; 
and in this manner to perform the two most important services 
that could be rendered to the future world of philosophy, — first, 
by indicating how much it had to unlearn, and how much to ac- 
quire ; and secondly, by pointing out the method in which the 
one process and the other might be successfully conducted; and, 
as this system depended on the most rigid and comprehensive 
process of experiment, it obtained for its illustrious author the 
title of ' the Father of Experimental Philosophy.' " 

This subject is too vast for a running comment upon the pro- 
gress of Learning like that which is here attempted. It is by 
his Essays that Bacon is best known to the multitude. The 
Novum Organum and De Augmentis are much talked of, but 
little read. They have, indeed, produced a vast effect upon the 
opinions of mankind ; but they have produced it through the 
operation of intermediate agents. They have moved the intel- 
lects which have moved the world. It is in the Essays alone 
that the mind of Bacon is brought into immediate contact with 
the minds of ordinary readers. There he opens an exoteric 
school, and talks to plain men, in language which everybody un- 
derstands, about things in which everybody is interested. He 
has thus enabled those who must otherwise have taken his 
merits on trust, to judge for themselves ; and the great body 
of readers have, during several generations, acknowledged that 
the man who has treated with siich consummate ability questions 
with which they are familiar, may well be supposed to deserve 
all the praise bestowed on him by those who have sat in his 
inner school. The following passage from the Essays* is in 
Bacon's early style : 

*' Crafty men contemn studies ; simple men admire them ; and wise men use them ; for 
they teach not their own use : that is a wisdom without them, and won by observation. 
Read not to contradict, nor to belieye, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be 
tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested. Reading maketh 
a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man. And therefore, if a man 
write little, he had need have a great memory ; if he confer little, have a present wit ; and 
if he read little, have much cunning to seem to know that he doth not. Histories make 
men wise, poets witty, the mathematics subtle, natural philosophy deep, morals grave, logic 
and rhetoric able to contend." 

Lord Macaulay has well observed : " It will hardly be dis- 
puted that this is a passage to be * chewed and digested.' "We 
do not believe that Thucydides himself has anywhere com- 
pressed so much thought into so small a space." 

No book ever made so great a revolution in the mode of think- 

* For educational purposes we recommend attention to the ably edited reprints of the 
Easays^ and The Advancement of Learning, by Thomas Markey, M.A. Archbishop 
Whately's annotated edition of the Essays is intended for a different class of students. 



Progress of Education. 117 

ing, overthrew so many prejudices, introduced so many new 
opinions — as the Novum Organum, Its nicety of observation 
has never been surpassed ; it blazes with wit, but with wit which 
is employed only to illustrate and decorate the truth. But 
what is most to be admired is the vast capacity of that intel- 
lect which, without effort, takes in at once all the domains of 
science — all the past, the present, and the future — all the en- 
couraging signs of the passing times — all the bright hopes of 
the coming age. 

Lord Bacon wrote paraphrases of the Psalms, of which it has 
been said: the "fine gold of David is so thoroughly melted 
down with the refined silver of Bacon, that the mixture shows 
nothing of alloy, but a metal greater in bulk, and differing in 
show from either of the component elements, yet exhibiting, at 
the same time, a luster wholly derived from the most precious 
of them." 

THE FIRST SCIENTIFIC TREATISES IN ENGLISH. 

Here should be mentioned the founder of the school pf Eng- 
lish writers, that is to say, to any useful or sensible purpose, — 
liobert Recorde, the physician, a man whose memory deserves, 
on several accounts, a much larger portion of fame than it has 
met with. He was the first who wrote on Arithmetic, and the 
first who wrote on Geometry in English ; the first who intro- 
duced Algebra into England ; the first who wrote on Astronomy 
and the doctrine of the Sphere in England ; and finally, the 
first Englishman (in all probability) who adopted the system of 
Copernicus. Recorde was also the inventor of the present 
method of extracting the square-root ; the inventor of the sign 
of equality ; and the inventor of the method of extracting the 
squai'e-root of multinomial algebraic quantities. According to 
Wood, his family was Welsh, and he himself a Fellow of All 
Souls' College, Oxford, in 1531 ; he died in 1558 in the King's 
Bench Prison, where he was confined for debt. Some have said 
that he was physician to Edward VI. and Mary, to whom his 
books are mostly dedicated. They are all written in dialogue 
between master and scholar, in the rude English of the time. 

INVENTION OF LOGARITHMS. GUNTER's SCALE. 

Another great benefactor to science was Baron Napier, of 
Merchiston, by his great invention of Logarithms, in 1614, 
w^hich, from his own day to the present hour, has been one of 
the most active and efficient servants of all the sciences depend- 
ent upon calculation ; nor could those of them in which the 
most splendid triumphs have been achieved have been possibly 



118 School-Bays of Eminent Men. 

carried to the heights they have without the assistance of Lo- 
garithms. 

By reducing to a few days the labor of many months (says Laplace), it doubles, as it 
were, the life of an astronomer, besides freeing him from the errors and dissent insepara- 
ble from long calculations. As an invention it is particularly gratifying to the human 
mind, emanating as it does exclusively from -within itself. Logarithms (says Professor 
Playfair) have been applied to numberless purposes which were not thought of at the 
time of their first construction. Even the sagacity of the author did not see the im- 
mense fertility of the invention he had discovered : he calculated his tables merely to 
facilitate arithmetical and chiefly trigonometrical computation : and little imagined that 
he was at that time constructing a scale whereon to measure the density of the strata of the 
atmosphere and the heights of mountains, that he was actually computing the areas and 
lengths of innumerable curves, and was preparing for a calculus, which was yet to be 
discovered, to make more clear many of the most refined and most valuable of its resources. 
Of Napier, therefore, if of any man, it may safely be pronounced, that his name will 
never be eclipsed by any one more conspicuous, or his invention be superseded by any- 
thing more valuable . 

Napier's Bones, or Bods, are a contrivance of Napier to facili- 
tate the performance of multiplication and division ; and might 
be used with advantage by young arithmeticians in verification of 
their work. 

Of the same period as their invention is Gunter's Scale, the 
useful wooden logarithmic scale invented by Edmund Gunter, to 
whom we are also indebted for the sector and the common sur- 
veyor's chain, and several printed works: he was also the author 
of the convenient terms cosine, cotangent, etc. — for "sine," 
"tangent," etc., of the complement. "Whatever, in short," it 
has been observed, "could be done by a w^ell-informed and 
ready-witted person to make the new theory of Logarithms 
more immediately available in practice to those who 'vvere not 
skillful mathematicians, was done by Gunter." 

THE SCIENCES AT OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE. 

An acute writer in the Companion to the Almanac for 1837 
observes: — "The University of Cambridge appears to have 
acquired no scientific distinction in the Middle Ages. Taking 
as a test the acquisition of celebrity on the Continent, we find 
that Bacon, Sacrobosco, Greathead, Eastwood, etc., w^ere all of 
Oxford. The latter University had its morning of scientific 
splendor, while Cambridge was comparatively unknown, and 
(with regard, at least, to definite college foundations) hardly 
beginning to exist: it had also its noon-day illustrated by the 
names of such men as Briggs, Wren, Wallis, Halley, and 
Bradley. The age of science at Cambridge is said to have begun 
with Francis Bacon ; and but that w^e think much of the differ- 
ence between him and his celebrated namesake (Roger Bacon), 
lies more in time and circumstances than in talents or feelings : 
we would rather date from IGOO with the former, than from 1250 
with the latter. Praise or blame on the side of either univer- 



Progress of Education, 119 

sity is out of the question, seeing that the earlier foundation of 
Oxford, and its superiority in pecuniary means, rendered all that 
took place highly probable. We rejoice in the recollections by 
the production of which we are enabled to show that this country 
held a conspicuous rank in the philosojDhy of the Middle Ages ; 
and we cheerfully and gratefully remember that, to the best of 
our knowledge and belief, we are in a great measure indebted for 
the liberty of writing our thoughts to the cultivation of the 
liberalizing sciences at Oxford in the dark ages. With regard 
to the University of Cambridge, for a long time there hardly 
existed the materials for any proper instruction, even to the 
extent of pointing out what books should be read by a student 
desirous of cultivating astronomy. Of this we have a remarka- 
ble instance. 

Jeremiah Horrocks, who is well known to astronomers as 
having made a greater step toward the amendment of the lunar 
theory than any Englishman before Newton, and whose course 
might be well known to every reader, but that he died at the age 
of 23, was at Cambridge in 1633 — 1635. From the age of 
boyhood he had been wholly given to the desire of making him- 
self an astronomer. But he could find no one who could instruct 
him, who could help him by joining him in the study — "such 
was the sloth and languor which had seized all." Horrocks found 
that books must be used instead of teachers : these he could not 
obtain in the University; nor could he there even learn to w^hat 
books he should direct his attention. Nor were the books them- 
selves which Horrocks (having but small means, and desiring 
the very best) afterward bought, in any one instance that we 
can discover, printed in England. 

A school-book of great popularity may be mentioned here. 
This is the well-known " Cocker's Arithmetic." The author, 
born about 1631, was an engraver and a teacher of writing and 
arithmetic, and the writer of several books of exercises in pen- 
manship, some of them on silver plates. His celebrated " Arith- 
metic" was not published until after his death, before 1677 : in 
the title-page it is described as " a plain and familiar method, 
suitable to the meanest capacity, for the full understanding of 
that incomparable art, as it is now taught by the ablest school- 
masters in City and Country." The first edition appeared in 
1677 ; the fourth in 1682 ; the thirty-seventh in 1720 ; there is 
no copy of either edition in the British Museum, the libraries of 
the Royal Society, Sion College, or the London Institution : a 
copy of the edition of 1678 has been sold for 8/. 10s. Cocker's 
Arithmetic was the first which entirely excluded all demonstra- 
tion and reasoning, and confined itself to commercial questions 



120 Sehool-Days of Eminent Men. 

only. This was the secret of its extensive circulation : upon it, 
nine out of ten of the subsequent Arithmetics have been 
modeled ; and every method since the author's time has been 
" according to Cocker." 

BOYHOOD AND EDUCATION OF OLIVER CROMWELL. 

Cromwell, the son of Robert Cromwell, and his wife Eliza- 
beth, was born at Huntingdon, in 1599. It is traditionally rela- 
ted that when an infant, his life was endangered by a great 
monkey at his grandfather's house taking him out of the cradle, 
and carrying him upon the leads of the house, to the dreadful 
alarm of the family (who made beds and blankets ready in the 
forlorn hope of catching himj, but at last brought him safely 
down. It is better established, Oliver was saved from drowning 
in his youth by Mr. Johnson, the curate of Cunnington. 

Cromwell was educated at the Free Grammar-school of Hun- 
tingdon by Dr. Beard, whose severity toward him is said to 
have been more than what was usual even in that age of barba- 
rous school discipline.* He was a resolute, active boy, fond of 
engaging in hazardous exploits, and more capable of hard study 
than inclined to it. His ambition was of a different kind, which 
discovered itself even in his youth. He is said to have displayed 
a more than common emotion in playing the part of Tactus, who 
finds a royal robe and a crown, in the old comedy of Lingua, 
performed at the Free-school of Huntingdon. f He is said often, 
in the height of his fortune, to have mentioned a gigantic figure 
which, when he was a boy, opened the curtains of his bed, and 
told him he should be the greatest person in the kingdom. It is 
also related that Cromwell (being at his uncle's house at Hinch- 
inbrook), when the royal family rested there on their way from 
Scotland, in 1604, was brought to play with . Prince Charles, 
then Duke of York, quarreled with him, beat him, and made his 
nose bleed profusely, — which was remembered as a bad omen 
for the King when Cromwell began to distinguish himself in the 
Civil Wars. 

Before Oliver had completed his seventeenth year, he was 
removed from the school at Huntingdon to Sydney Sussex 
College, Cambridge. Though his passion for athletic exercises 
still continued, so much so that he is said to have acquired the 
name of a royster in the university, it appears certain that he 
did not misspend his time there, but that he made a respectable 

* The frontispiece to the Theatre of God's Judgment is said to be a portrait of this severe 
schoolmaster. It represents him with two scholars standing behind, a rod in his hand, 
and Ai. in prasenti proceeding from his mouth. 

t Selected and abridged from Southey. 



Progress of Education, 121 

proficiencj in his studies. Within a year of this, his father died, 
and his mother, to whose care he appears to have been left, 
removed him from college. It has been affirmed that he was 
placed at Lincoln's Inn, but that instead of attending to the law, 
he wasted his time " in a dissolute course of life, and good 
fellowship and gaming " But Cromwell's name is not to be 
found in the registers of Lincoln's Inn, though his son Richard's 
is. It is, however, probable that Oliver was entered at some 
other of the inns of court. Returning thence to reside upon his 
paternal property, he is said to have led a low and boisterous 
life. However this may have been, he offended at this time by 
his irregularities both his paternal uncle and his maternal one. 
But, whatever may have been the follies and vices of Cromwell's 
youth, it is equally certain that he had strength and resolution 
enough to shake them off. 

In after life Cromwell was not insensible to literary merit. 
Archbishop Usher received a pension from him; Andrew Mar- 
veil and Milton were in his service ; and the latter always 
affirmed of him, that he was not so illiterate as was commonly 
supposed. He gave lOOZ. yearly to the Professor of Divinity 
at Oxford ; and it is said that he intended to have erected at 
Durham a college for the northern counties of England. 

During the Commonwealth, an 1658. appeared that truly excellent work The Practice of 
Christian Graces, or^ the Whole Duty of Man, which, not long after its publication, was 
translated into the Latin, French, and Welsh languages. Bishop Bull, one of the greatest 
ornaments of our church, was accustomed to read a chapter out of "The Whole Duty of 
JIan,'' iu addition to the performance of famil}' prayers in his house on Sunday evenings, 
'• for the further instruction of his flimilj-, particularly of those who had been deprived of 
going to church by reason of the necessary services of the house.'' Bishop Sanderson, 
Isaak Walton tells us, had some prayers read at night to him and to a part of his family 
out of '' The Whole Duty of Man." Dean Stanhope says, "Happy is the man who can 
form his style in plain practical preaching, upon the rational, instructive, and familiar way 
of the Whole Duty of Man ;" and of its style a writer in the Edinburgh Review says, 
"after a lapse of 170 years, it contains scarcely a word or phrase which has become super- 
annuated." Yet, the real authorship of this work has never yet been settled on strong 
and decisive evidence. It has been attributed to Bishop Fell. Dr. Allstree, Bishop Chappel, 
Archbishop Sterne. Lady Pakiugton, and Dr. Henry Hammond ; to Archbishop Frewen, 
Abraham \\'oodhead, Obadiah Walker, Mr. Fulman, and Dr. Chaplin. Lady Pakington's 
cliiim is founded upon a copy of the work, in her handwriting, being found amongst her 
papers after her death ; but, as this lady was a very devout person, and was much acquain- 
ted with the divines of the day, she is very likely to have been favored with a sight of the 
work before it was printed, and to have been allowed to take a copy of it for her own use. 
Tlie Editor of the reprint of the work published by Pickering, in 1842, adduces evidence to 
show that the author was Dr. Sterne, which he considers strong enough to justify belief. 
Dr. Southey describes "The Whole Duty of Man" as "a good old book, which contains 
the substance of a course of sermons, addressed in the plainest language to plain people, 
and setting before them those duties which they are called upon to perform in the ordinary 
course of life. The author was a person of sound judgment and sober piety, who sought 
to make his parishioners practical Christians, and not professing ones ; and that he was 
humble-minded there is conclusive proof, for he concealed his name." Until of late years 
the work was generally to be found among the books of well-regulated households ; and 
we have ever thought better of a family for its possessing a copy of " The Whole Duty 
of Man." 

CHARLES THE SECOND — HIS PATRONAGE OF LETTERS. 

Of the childhood and education of Charles II. we find scanty 



122 School-Bays of Eminent Men, 

record. He was the eldest son of Charles I. and Henrietta 
Maria of France, and was born at St. James's in 1630. He was 
chiefly brought up by his mother until he was twelve years of 
age. In his ninth year he was created Prince of Wales: when 
the Civil War broke out, he accompanied his father to the battle 
of Edgehill; and in 1645, he served with the royal troops in 
the west with the title of general. Next year, on the ruin of 
the royal cause, he joined the Queen, his mother, at Paris, and 
he afterward took up his residence at the Hague. This must 
have been almost the earliest opportunity that the Prince could 
have had for study, which must have been of a practical turn. 
Evelyn describes Charles as "a lover of the sea, and skillful in 
shipping ; not aflfecting other studies ; yet he had a laboratory, 
and knew of many empirical medicines, and the easier mechan- 
ical mathematics ; he loved planting and building, and brought 
in a politer way of living, which passed to luxury, and intoler- 
able expense." But this is the language of a courtier. 

Charles's love of the sea led him early in his reign to enter- 
tain the suggestions of certain governors of Christ's Hospital 
for the institution and endowment of the Royal Mathematical 
School. With Sir Robert Clayton, it is believed, originated this 
school ; and his project being backed by Sir Jonas Moore, then 
Surveyor-General of the Ordnance, and by Sir Christopher Wren 
and Samuel Pepys ; and having in its favor the mediation of 
the Duke of York, then Lord High Admiral of England, — a 
royal charter was granted, and the school was opened for 40 
boys, under the auspices of the King, in the year 1673. Beyond 
the grant of the charter, however, little was done by Charles 
toward the maintenance of his new foundation. His endow- 
ment did not extend beyond an annuity of 1000/., terminating 
at the expiration of seven years. The King reserved as many 
of the boys as might be required for his own services ; and a 
grant was obtained from the Government by Pepys to be given 
as premiums to merchant-masters for taking the other boys. 
The revenue was also increased by a gift, which it was thought 
the King would not approve of, but, on being consulted, he 
replied, that "so far was he from disliking, that he would be 
glad to see any gentleman graft upon his stock." The school 
flourished: for several years Pepys constantly attended the 
examination of the boys; and Sir Jonas Moore, one of the first 
practical mathematicians of the day, commenced for the master's 
use a system of mathematics, which was completed by Halley 
and Flamsteed. 

Another service which Charles rendered to the higher class of 
studies was his incorporation of the Royal Society, by royal 



Progress of Education, 123 

charter, in 1GG3, when the King signed himself in the charter- 
book as the founder;* and his brother, the Duke of York, signed 
as Fellow. Charles also presented the Society with a mace. 

Another advantage conferred on science in this reign was 
Charles's foundation, in 167G, of the Koyal Observatory at 
Greenwich, for the benefit of astronomy and navigation ; and 
the appointment of Flamsteed as the first Astronomer Royal. 

After the Restoration, the first steam-engine is commonly 
believed to have been constructed by the Marquis of Worcester, 
which he, in his Century of Inventions, describes as "an admi- 
rable and most forcible way to drive up water by fire." He 
used a cannon for his boiler, and he describes the water as run- 
ning "like a constant fountain-stream, 40 feet high; one vessel 
of water rarified by fire, driveth up 40 of cold water." This 
engine was seen at work in 1663, at Yauxhall, by Sorbiere, 
who foretold that the invention would be of greater use than 
the machine above Somerset House, to supply London with 
water. 

NONCONFORMIST SCHOOLS AT ISLINGTON AND NEWINGTON 

GREEN. 

In the latter part of the seventeenth century, the village of 
Islington appears to have been a refuge for Nonconformist 
ministers. Here, after the Act of Uniformity was passed, in 
1662, some of the ministers then ejected from the Church of 
England opened schools. For a time, however, they were pro- 
hibited from teaching ; but eventually they succeeded in estab- 
lishing academies in different places. The Rev. Thomas Doo- 
little, formerly Rector of St. Alphage's, London Wall, had a 
school at Islington about the year 1682, and prepared several 
young men for the ministry, among whom were the pious 
Matthew Henry and Dr. Edmund Calamy ; here the Rev. Ralph 
Button, of Merton College, Oxford, kept school, and had for 
one of his pupils Sir Joseph Jekyll. Several ministers also 
opened schools at Newington Green ; and at one of them, kept 
by the Rev. Charles Morton, previously a rector in Cornwall, 
" some score of young ministers were educated, as well as many 
other good scholars." Defoe was a pupil of Mr. Morton's: he 
says of his instructor, that he was a polite and profound scholar, 
and a master who taught nothing either in politics or science, 
which was dangerous to monarchical government, or which was 
improper for a diligent scholar to know. " Defoe was originally 

* The first charter (in Latin) has ornamented initials, and a finely executed portrait o*^ 
Charles II. in Indian ink. The charter empowers the president to tcear his hat while in 
the chair ; and the fellows addressed the president bareheaded, till he made a sign for them 
to put on their hats ; but these customs are now obsolete. 



124 Scliool-Days of Eminent Men. 

intended for the ministry: he tells us, it was his disaster first to 
be set apart for, and then to be set apart from, the honor of 
that sacred employ. At Newington he had for his school-fellow 
the father of the celebrated John Wesley. Another Islington 
notoriety of this period was Robert Ferguson, the Judas of 
Dryden's great satire, and conspicuous as an unprincipled poli- 
tician. By birth a Scotsman, he came to England, and being 
ejected from his living in Kent, got to be master of a school at 
Islington, which the Dissenters had set up as a rival to the 
schools of Westminster and the Charterhouse. At length he 
strayed into politics — was deeply engaged in the Rye House 
Plot — was the shameless adviser of the Duke of Monmouth in 
his rebellion — and was deservedly discarded by the sagacious 
Prince of Orange. His end, no doubt, was miserable." Lord 
Macaulay, in his History, devotes several pages to him. 



BOYHOOD OF JAMES II. 

The early life of this prince was clouded by the political 
troubles of the time, which, as they greatly tended to his per- 
sonal discomfiture, must have materially interfered with his 
instruction. James was the second surviving son of Charles I., 
by his queen Henrietta Maria, and was born at St. James's in 
1633. He was immediately declared Duke of York, but not 
formally created to that dignity till 1643. After the surrender 
of Oxford to Fairfax, in 1646, the duke, with his younger 
brother, Henry, afterward created Duke of Gloucester, and his 
sister Elizabeth, was committed by the Parliament to the care of 
the Earl of Northumberland, and he continued in the custody of 
that nobleman till the 21st of April, 1648, when he made his 
escape from St. James's Palace, disguised in female attire, and 
took refuge with his sister Mary, Princess of Orange. Here he 
joined a part of the English fleet, which had revolted from the 
Parliament, and was then lying at Helvoetsluys; but although 
at first received on board as an admiral, he soon after resigned 
that post to his brother, the Prince of Wales, on the arrival of 
the latter from Paris, and returned to the Hague. When 
Charles, now styled King by his adherents, came to Jersey, in 
September, 1649, he was accompanied by the duke, who 
remained with him during his stay of three or four months. He 
then returned to the Continent, and resided some time with his 
mother at Paris. 

'_' Never little family " (says Clarendon, who had an interview with him at Breda, in 
1650) ''was torn into so many pieces and factions. The duke was very young, yet loved 
intrigues so well that he was too much inclined to hearken to any men who had the confi- 
dence to make bold propositions to him. The king had appointed him to remain with the 
queen, and to obey her in all things, relig^ion only excepted. The Lord Byron was his 



Progress of Education, 125 

governor, ordained to be so by his father, and very fit for that province, being a very fine 
gentleman, well bred both in France and Italy, and perfectly versed in both languages, of 
great courage and fidelity, and in all subjects qualified for the trust ; but his being- absent 
in the icing's service when the Duke made his escape out of England, and Sir John Berk- 
ley being then put about him, all pains had been taken to lessen his esteem of the Lord 
Byron ; and Sir John Berkley, knowing that he could no longer remain governor, when 
the Lord Byron came thither, and hearing that he was on his journey, infused into the 
Duke's mind that it was a great lessening of his dignity at that age (when he was not 
above fourteen years of age, and backward enough for that age), to be under a governor ; 
and so, partly by disesteeming the person, and partly by reproaching the office, he grew 
less inclined to the person of that good lord than he should have been."' — Life, vol. i. 
p. 284. 

A singular circumstance now occurred, which well bespeaks 
the character of James. Shortly before his meeting with 
Clarendon, it had been reported that Charles was dead ; upon 
w^hich the duke, looking upon himself as already King, made 
several journeys to take counsel with his friends ; and, upon the 
falsehood of the intelligence respecting Charles being discovered, 
James was so childish that he w^as rather delighted with the 
journeys he had made, than sensible that he had not entered 
upon them with reason enough; observing that "they had forti- 
fied him with a firm resolution 7iever to acknowledge that he had 
committed any errorr In the end he was obliged to return to 
his mother at Paris, where he chiefly resided until he had 
attained his twentieth year. He served with reputation in both 
the French and Spanish armies ; but his great aptitude was for 
sea affairs, and after his return to England in 16 GO, he for some 
time acted as Lord High Admiral. His exertions, assisted by 
the indefatigable Pepys, the Secretary of the Navy, raised the 
fleet which afterward won the battle of La Hogue; as his 
camp at Hounslow was the nursery for the victorious army of 
Marlborough. James employed part of the leisure of his retire- 
ment in writing an account of his own life, the original manu- 
script of which extends to nine folio volumes. The manuscript 
was burnt by the person to whom it had been confided; but a 
digest of the royal autobiography had been long before drawn 
up by an unknown hand, apparently under the direction either 
of James or his son ; and this digest being preserved among the 
papers belonging to the Stuart family, which were obtained by 
George IV., when Regent, has been printed. 

LITERATURE OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 

It is now time to glance at the literary characters of this 
period, reserving their personal characteristics for another por- 
tion of the present volume. 

Foremost in the rank is Milton, though he obtained not in his 
life the reputation he deserved. Edmund Waller was the first 
refiner of English poetry, or at least of its rhyme. Cowley was 
more admired during his life than Milton, and more celebrated 



126 School-Bays of Eminent Men, 

after his death. Sir John Denham had a loftiness and vigor, 
which had scarcely been attained by any previous poet that 
wrote in rhyme. The Oceana of James Harrington was a polit- 
ical romance, well adapted to astonish when the systems of im- 
aginary republics occupied so much attention. 

There was also much admirable writing in the English lan- 
guage, both under Charles I. and II., — by "William Chilling- 
worth, in his " Keligion of Protestants, a safe way to Salvation ;" 
in Cleveland's noble letter to Cromwell ; in the famous histories 
of Lord Clarendon, and the pious eloquence of Jeremy Taylor ; 
in the abstract philosophy of Dr. Henry More ; in the orthodox 
and learned divinity of Dr. Isaac Barrow ; in the Exposition of 
Bishop Pearson ; in the still popular works of Tillotson ; in the 
courtly volumes of Sir William Temple ; and even in the wild 
and perverted philosophy of Thomas Hobbes. 

The reign of Charles II. has sometimes been considered the 
Augustan age of English literature, though more frequently the 
honor has been adjudged to the eighteenth century, as having 
still greater purity and simplicity of language. The authors of 
this period exhibit much fine genius, though corrupted by the 
bad taste to which they were forced to conform, as may be seen 
in the eloquent and spirited works of Dryden, the comic talent 
of Wycherley, and the pathetic powers of Otway. There were 
other authors of the time, who wrote with good taste, as the 
Marquis of Halifax, and the Earls of Mulgrave, Dorset, and 
Roscommon, though their productions are more limited in extent, 
or slighter in the character of their composition. 

The few female autobiographists who have graced the literature of England were con- 
fined to the stirring times of the Commonwealth, when the pressure of circumstances, by 
acting upon the strongest and finest feelings of woman, developed her intellect, and forced 
her upon active and even perilous existence. The two most brilliant instances of this 
charming genre of egotism are to be found in the memoirs of the fantastic Ducbess of 
Newcastle, and in those of the heroic Mrs. Hutchinson, both admirable illustrations of 
their respective classes at the epoch in which they flourished : the one of the pure, 
unmixed aristocracy of England; and the other of ite gentry, or highest grade of 
middle life. 

Mrs. Evelyn was one of the most accomplished women of the court of Charles the 
Second, and one of the few virtuous women who frequented it. She was a celebrated lin- 
guist and artist, and her works in oil and miniature are frequently quoted with pride by 
her husband. — Lady Morgan. 

RISE OF FREE-SCHOOLS, OR CHARITY SCHOOLS. 

We have already shown that the endowed grammar-schools 
were the natural successors of the schools and charities of the 
Church before the Reformation. They contemplated none but 
the most liberal education. Children were to be brought up as 
scholars, or to be taught nothing. The grammar-schools were 
the nurseries of the learned professions, and they opened the 
way for the highest honors of those professions to the humblest 
in the land. • 



Progress of Education, 127 

About the time of the Revolution, the commercial classes, who 
had grown into wealth and consequent importance, began natu- 
rally to think that schools in which nothing was taught but 
Latin and Greek were not altogether fitted for those who were 
destined to a mercantile life. Uneducated men who had pushed 
their way to fortune and honor generously resolved to do some- 
thing for their own class ; and thus we come to see in every 
town not a free grammar-school, but a free-school, over whose 
gates was generally set up the effigy of a boy in blue or green, 
with an inscription betokening that by the last will of Alderman 
A. B. this school had been founded for 20 poor boys, to be 
clothed, and taught reading, writing, and arithmetic. 

With a comparatively small population, these free-schools 
were admirable beginnings of the education of the poorer classes. 
While the grammar-schools were making divines, lawyers and 
physicians, out of the sons of the professional classes and the 
wealthier tradesmen, the free-schools were making clever handi- 
craftsmen and thriving burgesses out of the sons of the mechan- 
ics and laborers ; and many a man who had been a charity boy 
in his native town, when he had risen to competence, pointed 
with honor and pride to the institution Avhich had made him 
what he was, and he often loosened his purse-strings to perpetu- 
ate for others the benefits which he had himself enjoyed. 

Thus we see that what the grammar-schools had done for the 
higher and middle classes, the free-schools did for the lower, in 
a different measure. They were the prizes for the poor boy, 
who had no ambition, perhaps no talent, for the struggles of the 
scholar; they taught him what, amongst the wholly untaught, 
would give him a distinction and a preference in his humble 
career, — and he was unenvied by the less fortunate, because they 
knew that there was no absolute bar to their children and their 
kindred runninsr the same course. 

In a few cases, we owe public-schools to some providential 
deliverance of the founders ; as in the instance of Dame Alice 
Owen, who, in 1613, founded and endowed in St. John-street- 
road, London, a school for 30 poor scholars, in memory of her 
having escaped "braining" by a stray arrow upon the site, then 
called Hermitage Fields ; the arrow having passed through Dame 
Owen's high-crowned hat. 

The originator of this charity-school movement is by some 
stated to have been William Blake, a woolen-draper, "at the 
sign of the Golden Boy," Maiden-lane, Covent-garden, who 
founded the Hospital at Highgate,* called the Ladies' Charity 

♦There was already at Highgate a Grammar School, founded by Sir Roger Cholmeley in 

the reign of Elizabeth ; the first statute ordering that the schoolmaster should " teach 



128 School-Days of Eminent Men. 

School, before 1685, and who purchased Dorchester House for 
that purpose, expending 5000/. in his benevolent project, Blake 
had for his coadjutor Alderman Cornish, who, in 1685, was tried 
and executed as having been concerned in the Rye-house plot. 
It is generally stated that Charity Schools were first erected in 
the parish of Aldgate, and St. Margaret, Westminster ; and a 
slab in front of the Aldgate school-house, adjoining the Royal 
Mint, bears an inscription to the purport that it was the first 
Protestant Charity vSchool, and was erected by voluntary contri- 
butions in 1693. Upon this, Blake says: "If it comes to the 
earliest London school for poor children, perhaps the Catholics 
take the lead ; for we find that it was part of the tactics of the 
Jesuits, in the reign of James II. to promote their design of sub- 
verting the Protestant religion by infusing their Romish tenets 
into the minds of the children of the poor by providing schools 
for them in the Savoy and Westminster."* Blake then describes 
his scheme as a good work, because it would, in some measure, 
"stop the mouths of the Papists," who were wont to reproach 
Protestants with the scarcity of their hospitals. 

Blake, who styled himself "housekeeper" to the school, wrote 
Silver Drops, or Serious Thoughts, in which he advocated the 
good cause. This is a rare book, with four engravings (one a 
view of Dorchester House), which were torn out and used as 
receipts for subscriptions to the charity. The Prospectus 
states: 

Being well informed that there is a pious, good, and commendable work for maintaining 
near 40 poor or fatherless children, born all at or near Ilighgate, Ilornse)-, or Ilamsted, we, 
whose names are subscribed, do engage or promise that if the said boys are decently clothed 
in blew, lined with yellow ; constantly fed all alike with good and wholesom diet; taught 
to read, write, and cast accompts, and so put out to trades, in order to live another day, 
then we will give, etc. 

Blake then pleads for his project by various addresses, which 
he calls "charity-school sticks," ostensibly the production of the 
boys, but in reality written by himself. But Blake's appeals 
failed, and having "fooled away his estate in building," he was 
thrown into prison for debt ; and while there he wrote another 
work, entitled "The State and Case of a Design for the better 
Education of Thousands of Parish Children successively in the 
vast Northern Suburbs of London vindicated, etc." Next, 
Blake, about 1650, at the funeral of his wife, thus exhorted his 

young children their ABC, and other English books, and to write, and also in their gram 
mar as they should grow up thereto ;" but the foundation dwindling to a mere charily 
school, by the neglect of the governors, the school was restored, and is now in active ope- 
ration as a Grammar-school under a scheme of the Court of Chancery. The income is 
about 777/., and the School is free to 40 boys, nominated by Governors from the neigh- 
borhood. 

♦Notes and Queries, No. 210. 



Progress of Education. 129 

friends to subscribe to the school: "I was brouf^ht up by mj 
parents to Icarne Hail Mary, Paternoster, the Belief, and learne 
to read ; and where I served mj apprenticeship little more was 
to be found," and he attributes it to God's grace that he fell a 
reading the Practice of Piety,^ etc. Such were the exertions 
of Blake, the Covent Garden philanthropist, to whom must be 
conceded the honor of being the pioneer of our Charity Schools. 

Westminster has, to this day, four of these schools, distin- 
guished by the color of the clothes worn by the scholars. First 
is St. Margaret's Hospital, established and endowed in 1633 : 
the master's house bears a bust of Charles I. and the royal arms, 
richly carved, colored and gilt ; adjoining the school-house is a 
quaint old flower-garden ; the boys wear a long green skirt, and 
a red leather girdle ; hence St. Margaret's is known as the 
Green Coat Hospital ; the grace used here, attributed to Bishop 
Compton, is the same as that said in Christ's Hospital. Then 
there is the Westminster Blue Coat aSc;^oo/, instituted 1G88 ; and 
next Ghxiy Coat Hospital, founded in 1G98, and reconstructed in 
1706, when the school-house was built : the centre bears the 
royal arras of Queen Anne, with the motto Semp)er Eadem, 
flanked by a male and female figure in the olden costume of the 
children — dark gray dresses, the girl's bodice open in front, and 
corded. In 1686, Sarah, Duchess of Somerset, bequeathed 100/. 
to support six fatherless boys in the school, to be distinguished 
by wearing 2/e//ow caps. The fourth and last is Palmer's School,t 
the boys of which wear hlaclz coats. 

A school was commenced about this period at Kensington, by 
a bequest in 1645, to establish " a free school for poor men's 
children to be taught reading and arithmetic ;" which was ex- 
tended to clothing and instructing boys and girls " in all needful 
learning and work, and the principles of the Church, and to dis- 
pose them to useful trades." Queen Anne and Prince George 
of Denmark contributed to the fund, and in 1713 a new school- 
house was built, west of Kensington Church, by Sir John Van- 
brugh : this is a fine specimen of brick work ; in the front are 
costumed statuettes of a charity boy with a pen and scroll, in- 
scribed, '" I was naked and ye clothed me ;" and a charity girl 
presenting a prayer-book : in the old school-room is a vellum list 
of subscribers to the school from 1701 to 1750. 

*The Practice of Piety, by Bayly, Bishop- of Bangor, a book much read by John 
BanyaQ. 

t Founded by the Rev. Edward Palmer, B. D., who also built alms-houses and a 
chapel. Around these sprung up cottages and small houses, which grew into " Palmer's 
Village." Thirty years since, here was an old way-.'^iJe inn (the Prince of Orange) ; the 
cottages had gardens, and here was the village green, upon wliich the May-pole was an- 
nually set up; this rurality has now disappeared, and with it, from maps and plans, the 
name of "Palmer's Village." — Curiosities of London^ p. 760. 

9 



130 School-Days of Eminent Men. 

Among the oldest Charity Schools in the metropolis are those 
of St. Clement Danes, Strand, established in 1700, on the prin- 
ciples then first propagated by the Society for Promoting Chris- 
tian Knowledge. The School-house is in the neighborhood of 
Clare Market, formerly Clement's Inn Fields, where theatres and 
taverns, and other low haunts of dissipation, held out their baits, 
and for neglect of Christian education lured many a soul to 
early ruin. 

Another of these early institutions is the Ladies' Charity 
School, which was established in 1702, at King-street, Snow-hill, 
London, and was there kept 145 years, when it was removed to 
John-street, Bedford-row. Mrs. Thrale and Dr. Johnson were 
subscribers to this school ; and Johnson drew from it his story 
of Betty Broom, in the Idler. In the school minutes, 17G3, the 
ladies of the committee censure the schoolmistress for listening 
to the story of the Cock-lane Ghost, and desire her to "■ keep 
her belief in the article to herself." The 150th anniversary of 
this School was celebrated with a public dinner at Stationers' 
Hall, in 1852. 

EDUCATION OF WILLIAM III. 

Although William Henry, Prince of Orange Nassau, occu- 
pies a prominent place in the history of England and of man- 
kind, his boyhood and education, and subsequent encouragement 
of letters, may be briefly told. He was born in 1G50, and was 
the posthumous son of William II. of Orange, by Mary, daughter 
of Charles I., king of England. He was a weak and sickly 
child; but Lord Macaulay describes him as largely endowed by 
nature with the qualities of a great ruler, which education devel- 
oped in no common degree. The historian says : 

His attention wag, howerer, confined to those studies which form strenuous and saga- 
cious men of business. Fiomachild he listened with interest when high questions of 
finance, alliance, and war were discussed. Of geometry he learned as much as was neces- 
sary for the construction of a ravelin or a hornwork. Of languages, by the help of a 
memory singularly powerful, he learned as much as was necessary to enable him to com- 
prehend and answer without assistance everything that was said to him, and every Icttor 
which he received. The Dutch was his own tongue. He understood Latin, Italian, and 
Spanish. He spoke and wrote French, English, and German — inelegantly, it is true, and 
inexactly, but fluently and intelligently. He was carefully instructed in the Calvanistic 
divinity, to which his family was attached ; and his theological opinions were even more 
decided than those of his ancestors. The tenet of predestination was the keystone of his 
religion. 

The faculties which are necessary for the conduct of important business ripened in him 
at a time of life when they have scarceh- begun to blossom in ordinary men. Since Octa- 
vius, the world had seen no such instance of precocious statesmanship. Skillful diplomatists 
were surprised to hear the weighty observations which at seventeen the prince made on 
public affairs, and still more surprised to see the lad, in situations in which he might have 
been expected to betray strong pa.ssion, preserve a composure as imperturbable as their 
own. At eighteen, he sat among the fathers of the Commonwealth, grave, discreet, and 
judicious as the oldest of them. At twentj'-one, in a day of gloom and terror, he was 
placed at the head of the administration. At twentj' -three, he was renowned throughout 
Europe as a soldier and a poUtician. 

Meanwhile, he made little proficiency la fashionable or literary accomplishments. Ills 



Progress of Education. 131 

manners -R-ere altogether blunt Dutch. He was little interested in letters or science. The 
discoveries of Newton and Leibnitz, the poems of Dryden and Boileau, were unknown to 
him. Dramatic performances tired him. He had indeed some talent for sarcasm, and not 
seldom employed, quite unconsciously, a natural rhetoric, quaint indeed, but vigorous 
and original. — Abridged from Maraulay^s Htst. of England, vol. ii. 

After William had become King of England, he was to the 
last a foreigner in speech, tastes, and habits. He spoke our 
language, but not well ; his accent was foreign, his choice of 
words was inelegant, and his vocabulary seems to have been no 
larjrer than was necessary for the transaction of business. Our 
literature he was incapable of enjoying or understanding. He 
never once, during his whole reign, showed himself at the thea- 
tre. The poets who wrote Pindaric verses in his praise com- 
plained that their flights of sublimity were beyond his compre- 
hension ; perhaps he did not lose much by his ignorance.* 

It is true that his Queen did her best to supply what was 
wanting. She was English by birth, and English also in her 
tastes and feelings. She took much pleasure in the lighter kinds 
of literature, and did something toward bringing books into fash- 
ion among ladies of quality. She paid strict attention to her 
religious duties ; and her well-bestowed patronage of Doctor 
Tillotson proves her to have been a true friend of the church; 
and even the Jacobite libelers of the time, who respected noth- 
ing else, respected her name. Tenison proved himself a friend 
to public education by founding in St. James's parish, attached 
to his chapel, a school, with schoolmasters to teach, without 
charge, 40 poor boys of the parish to read, write, cast accounts, 
etc. To Tenison also we owe one of the few public Libraries 
in the metropolis. 

Tenison's Library, built by Sir Christopher Wren, is situated in Castle-street, in the rear 
of the National Gallery. It was founded in 1684 by Dr. Tenison, then Vicar of St. Martin"s- 
in-the-Fields, to supply what he considered a deficiency of "any one shop of a stationer 
fully furnished with books of various learning within the precinct of the city and lii erty 
of that minster."' Evelyn, in his Diary, 15th Feb., 1683-4, records : " He (Tenison) told 
me there were 30 or 40 young men in Orders in his parish, either governors to young gen- 
tlemen, or chaplains to noblemen, who being reproved by him on occasion for frequenting 
taverns or coffee-houses, told him they would study or employ their time better, if they 
had books. This put the pious Doctor on his design." The library consists of about 4000 
volumes; Lord Bacon's JVote-boolc, and various other of his MSS.: and an early Chaucer 
MS. The collection also contains the rare books bequeathed by Le Courayer, canon and 
chief librarian of St. Genevieve, and author of the celebrated Dissertation on the Validity 
of the Ordinations and the Succession of the Bishops of the Church of England The 
library is open free to " the inhabitants of Westminster and the neighborhood thereof." 

The clergy in this reign evinced devotedness for the spread of 
Christian Education by the establishment of two excellent insti- 
tutions, which flourish to the present day. 

In 1698 was founded "The Society for Promoting Christian 

* Prior, who was treated by William with much kindness, and who was very grateful for 
it, informs us that the king did not understand poetical eulogy. The passage is in a highly 
curious manuscript, the property of Lord Lansdowne. — Macaulay's History of England, 
vol. ii. 



132 School-Days of Eminent Men. 

Knowledge," by publishing religious works at a cheap rate, 
approved of bj a committee of members of the Church of Eng- 
land; the profits, together with the legacies and donations to 
the society's funds, being devoted to the diifusion of Christian 
knowledge and the general education of the poor ; to making 
gratuitous grants of its publications to parochial and other lend- 
ing libraries, etc., in England and "Wales; and to promoting 
Christian education abroad by supplying natives and settlers with 
books, effecting translations, etc. At the close of this reign (in 
1701) was incorporated "The Society for the Propagation of the 
Gospel in Foreign Parts," for the religious instruction of his 
Majesty's subjects beyond the seas, and for the maintenance of 
clergymen in the plantations, colonies, and factories of Great 
Britain. "Among the founders and earliest supporters of this 
Society were Arbhbishops Tenison, Sharp, Wake, Potter ; 
Bishops Compton, Roebuck, Burnet, Beveridge ; Dean Prideaux, 
Robert Nelson, William Melmoth, John Evelyn, etc. The Rev. 
John Wesley was originally a missionary of this Society, and in 
that character proceeded to America in 1735, returning to Eng- 
land in 1738." 

THE KEIGN OF QUEEN ANNE. THE AUGUSTAN AGE. 

Anne, the second daughter of James Duke of York, by 
his wife Anne Hyde, was born at St. James's, in 1GG5. Her 
education was intrusted to Dr. Henry Compton (subsequently 
Bishop of Oxford and of London), and she was by him firmly 
grounded in the principles of Protestantism. 

The reign of Queen Anne (1702 to 1714) was as distinguished 
for literature as for arms ; but, although her administrators 
numbered among them eminent scholars, her own tastes and 
opinions had little share in calling forth the literary genius and 
talent which have led to her reign being styled the Augustan Era 
of English Literature — on account of its supposed resemblance 
in intellectual opulence to the reign of the Emperor Augustus. 
This opinion has not been entirely followed or confirmed in the 
present day. Anne's reign produced Addison, Arbuthnot, Con- 
greve. Pope, Prior, Steele, and Swift — writers of a high degree 
of excellence in their particular walks, but scarcely to be com- 
pared with the great poets of the reign of Elizabeth, or with a 
few other illustrious names of a succeeding generation, such as 
Milton and Dryden. Yet, Addison and Steele invented or in- 
troduced among us the periodical essay, a species of writing 
which has never been surpassed, or on the whole equaled, by 
any one of their many followers. Who can describe the light- 
ness, variety, and urbanity of these delightful papers — the deli- 



Progress of Education, 183 

cate imagination and exquisite humor of Addison, or the vivacity, 
warm-heartedness, and perfectly generous nature of Steele ? 

This was the age of the Examiners, Spectators, Tatlers, and 
Guardians, which gave us the first examples of a style possess- 
ing all the best qualities desirable in a vehicle of general amuse- 
ment and instruction ; easy and familiar without coarseness, 
animated without extravagance, polished without unnatural 
labor, and from its flexibility adapted to all the varieties of the 
gay and the serious. 

Next to Addison is Arbuthnot, a writer of sound English, 
pointed wit, and polished humor. Congreve is our most brilliant 
writer of comedy. Pope wrote the poetry of artificial life with 
a perfection never since attained; and in the hands of Swift 
(the most powerful and original prose-writer of the period), 
satire was carried to its utmost pitch and excellence;* whilst 
Prior, in his graceful and fluent versification, reflected the lively 
illustration and colloquial humor of his master, Horace. Prior's 
patron, St. John Lord Bolingbroke (one of Anne's ministry), 
was so distinguished a scholar, that even his most familiar con- 
versations, it is said, would bear printing without correction; 
for he w^as one of the most brilliant orators and talkers of his 
time. It is lamentable to add, that Bolingbroke from early life 
had cast off belief in revelation. Fortunately, his works are 
now but little read. 

Harley, Earl of Oxford, the favorite minister of Queen Anne, 
was not only a great encourager of learning, but the greatest 
book-collector of his time; and his curious books and manu- 
scripts form the nucleus of the Harleian Library, now one of the 
richest treasures of the British Museum. 

Among the educational events of this reign may be mentioned 
the establishment of the Clarendon Press at Oxford, in part from 
the proceeds of the sale of Lord Clarendon's History of the Re- 
hellion, presented to the University by his son. The building, 
by Sir John Vanbrugh, continued to be used according to its 
original intention until 1830, when additional room being re- 
quired to supply the increased demand for books, a new build- 
ing was erected opposite the Radclifte Observatory. 

Among the free schools founded in this reign, one in Aldgate merits special record from 
its perfect adaptation to the requirements of the times. Such was the school founded by 
Sir John Cass, Alderman of the ward of Portsoken, in the year 1710. Sir John's father, 

* Arbuthnot, Pope, and Swift, in 17i4, engaged to write together a satire on the abuse 
of human learning in every branch ; but the design was not carried out, and great was 
the loss to polite letters. " Arbuthnot was skilled in everything which related to science ; 
Pope was a master of the fine arts ; and Swift excelled in the knowledge of the world. Wit 
theyhad all in equal measure ; and this so large, that no age perhaps, ever produced three 
men on whom nature had more bountifully bestowed it, or art had brought it to higher 
perfection " 



134 School-Bays of Eminent Men, 

Thomas Cass, Esq., of Grove-street, Hackney, had acquired an ample fortune as carpenter 
to the Hoyal Ordnance, which, upon his death, descended to his son and only child, who 
having been educated in the true principles of the Established Church, as he advanced in 
life was one of those who, in the reign of Anne, distinguished themselves for their zeal in 
support of her rights by contributing to turn the current of those times, when it became 
the prevailing fashion to discountenance orthodoxy and uniformity in religious worship, 
of which Sir John Cass was an exemplary pattern. On the opening of these schools in the 
year 1710, a sermon was preached in the parish church of St. Botolph, Aldgate, by the Most 
Kev. Sir \Villiam Dawes, Archbishop of York, at which were present no less than sixteen 
noblemen and forty members of the House of Commons, with the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, 
Sheriffs, and Common Council, besides many other eminent persons. Some hundreds of 
children of both sexes have received an excellent education in this establishment, which 
is, to this day, one of the most flourishing of the City schools. 

REIGNS OF GEORGE I. AND GEORGE II. 

George I. was born at Hanover, in 1660, on the day before 
that on which Charles II. made his entry into London, at the 
Restoration, His education was grossly neglected, notwithstand- 
ing that his mother, the Electress Sophia, was the protector of the 
learned men of her day, and spoke five languages with fluency. 
The Prince's inattention to study must have been great indeed ; 
for he never acquired even the language of the people (the 
English) over whom he expected to reign. After his accession 
to the throne, he established professorships of Modern History 
in the universities; and he gave the library of the Bishop of Ely, 
which cost the king 6000 guineas, to the University of Cam- 
bridge. He liberally patronized Vertue, the engraver; be- 
stowed the Laureateship upon Nicholas Rowe ; and encouraged 
Dr. Desaguliers in rendering natural philosophy popular, in a 
course of lectures at Plampton Court. When congratulated by 
a courtier on his being sovereign of Great Britain and Hanover, 
" rather," said the King, " congratulate me on having such a 
subject in one as Newton, and such a subject in the other as 
Leibnitz." 

In this reign were educated Samuel Johnson, and Hume and 
Robertson, the historians. Of Johnson's boyhood and school- 
days we shall speak hereafter. 

George IL, the only son of George I. and his queen Sophia 
Dorothea, was born at Hanover, in 1683. He was educated 
under the direction of his grandmother, but was nowise distin- 
guished for learning, nor in after-life felt or affected the least 
admiration for art, science, or literature. In his long reign, 
however, flourished in literature, Sherlock, Hoadley, Seeker, 
Warburton, Leland, Thompson, Akenside, Home, Gray, John- 
son, the two Wartons, Robertson, Hume, Fielding and Smollet, 
not to mention Swift, Pope and Young, the survivors of a former 
age. Yet, this and the previous reign were a blank half cen- 
tury in the annals of the education of the people. 

At the close of the reign of George II. was opened The 



Progress of Education. 135 

British Museu^i, which may be regarded as one of the educa- 
tional institutions of the country. 

The British Museum has been the growth of a century, between the purchase of Mon- 
tague House for the collection of 1753, and the completion of the new buildings. The 
Museum originated in a suggestion in the will of Sir Hans Sloane (d. 1753), ofTering his 
collection to parliament for 20,000/., it having cost him 50,000/. The offer was accepted ; 
and by an Act (26th George II.) were purchased all Sir Hans Sloane's "library of books, 
drawings, manuscripts, prints, medals, seals, cameos and intaglios, precious stones, agates, 
jaspers, vessels of agate and jasper, crystals, mathematical instruments, pictures," etc. 
By the same Act was bought, for 10,000^, the Harleian Library of MSS (about 7600 vol- 
umes of rolls, charters, etc.); to which were added the Cottonian Library of MSS., and 
the library of Major Arthur Edwards. By the same Act also was raised by lottery 
100.000/., out of which the Sloane and Harleian collections were paid for ; 10,250/. to Lord 
Halifax for Montague Uou.se, and 12,873/. for its repairs ; a fund being set apart for the pay- 
ment of taxes and salaries of officers. Trustees were elected from persons of rank, 
station, and literary attainments ; and the institution was named The British Museum. 
To Montague House were removed the Harleian collection of MSS. in 1755; other collec- 
tions in 1756 ; and the Museum was opened to the public January 15, 1759. 

EDUCATION OF GEORGE III. 

How various the fortunes under which the royal youth of 
England have been reared for her rule and government may be 
seen by a glance through the preceding pages. The retrospect 
will be interesting and instructive, in showing the storm and 
sunshine, the 2'>romise and blight, amid which have been reared 
the princes of 

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, 
This nurse, this teeming womb of royal Kings, 
Eeared by their breed, and famous by their birth. 

Shakspeare^ Richard II. 

As we approach the close of the long line, such violence and 
trouble as beset the infancy of our earliest sovereigns is no lon- 
ger to be recorded of the lives of their successors : we have no 
longer to chronicle how the heir to the crown drew his first 
lessons, safe only in the strength of the fortress ; or how the 
course of his early studies was broken by shifting from castle to 
castle, as the only security amidst the fierce contentions of civil 
war. Such chances of evil have long ceased to beset the infancy 
of our kings ; but they have been succeeded by troubles of a 
milder kind — though of almost equal ill-promise for the welfare of 
princes — in the political difficulties which have too often attended 
their early lives, and beset their training for the kingly office. 
The boyhood and youth of George III. were clouded with such 
disadvantages, which, however, the strong natural sense of the 
prince, in great measure, enabled him to overcome. Whatever 
may have been the defects of his own training, it must be ac- 
knowledged that the King was — what many influential persons of 
his time were not — " an avowed friend to the diffusion of educa- 
tion, and certainly was not afraid that his subjects should be 
made either more difficult to govern, or worse in any other 
respect, by all classes and every individual of them being taught 



136 School-Days of Eminent Men. 

to read and to write." His reign is perhaps to be placed above 
every other of the same length in modern history, for the ac- 
cessions to almost every department of knowledge by which it 
was signalized ; and even the latter half of the period, notwith- 
standing the wars and political confusion by which it was dis- 
turbed, was at least as distinguished for the busy and successful 
cultivation of science and literature, as the quieter time that 
preceded. 

George Willliam Frederick, the eldest son of Frederick Lew- 
is, Prince of Wales, and Augusta, daughter of Frederick IL, 
Duke of Saxe-Gotha, was born in 1738, at Norfolk House, St. 
James's-square.* The nation were elated at the birth of the 
heir presumptive to the throne ; and on the first anniversary of 
his birthday, he was congratulated by a company of GO Lillipu- 
tian soldiers, all under twelve years of age, who were received 
by the infant prince wearing an uniform, hat and feather ; and 
next year he was present at a masque written by Thompson and 
Mallet, to commemorate the accession of his family to the British 
throne. At the age of six, the prince was placed under the care 
of Dr. Francis Ayscough, afterward Bishop of Bristol, who, 
writing to the pious Dr. Doddridge, says : " I thank God I have 
one great encouragement to quicken me in my duty, which is the 
good disposition of the children intrusted to me ; as an instance, 
I must tell you that Prince George (to his honor and my shame) 
had learnt several pages in your book of verses, without any di- 
rection from me." 

The Prince of "Wales was a liberal patron of men of letters. 
He paid great attention to the education of his son, for whose 
use he commissioned Dr. Freeman to write the History of the 
English Tongue. On the first appearance of the Ramhler, by 
Dr. Johnson, he also sought out the author that he might be- 
friend him; the Prince also greatly encouraged Yertue, the en- 
graver ; and upon one occasion he sent the poet Glover a bank- 
note of 500/. to console him in his affliction. 

To accustom the young Prince and his brothers to rhetoric, 
plays were got up at Leicester House ; when Prince George 
filled the character of Fortius, in Cato, and recited the pro- 
logue. The instruction of the young actors was intrusted to 
Quin, the comedian, who, many years afterward, on hearing of 
the graceful manner in which George IH. delivered his first 
speech from the throne, said, with delight, "Aye! 'twas I that 
taught the boy to speak." With Lord Harcourt and Lord 
Waldegrave successively as governors, and Dr. Hayter, bishop 

*The room of the old mansion in the rear of the present Norfolk Uouse is preserved ; 
and the bed in v.'hich the prince was born is at ^\'orksop, Notts. 



Progress of Educatioyi. 137 

of Norwich, succeeded by Dr. John Thomas, Bishop of Peter- 
borough, as preceptors, and under the more influential superin- 
tendence of Lord Bute, the Prince progressed in his studies, but 
was kept in great privacy by his mother, whose notions were cer- 
tainly very narrow. One of her complaints against the Bishop 
of Norwich was that "he insisted upon teaching the Princes logic, 
which, as she was told, was a very old study for children of their 
age, not to say of their condition." From Lord Bute the Prince 
derived his chief knowledge of the constitution ; Bute actually 
drawing his subjects for conversation from the Commentaries 
of Blackstone, the author permitting him to see that work in 
manuscript, and even to submit it to be read by the Prince. He 
grew up to be perfectly master of all the proprieties of his 
station ; and the decorum of his private conduct gave a higher 
tone to public manners, and made the domestic virtues fashion- 
able even in circles where they were most apt to be treated with 
neglect. He was well acquainted with the language, habits, and 
institutions of the English people. " Born and educated in this 
country," said his majesty, in his opening speech to the Parliament, 
" I glory in the name of Briton, and I hold the civil and religious 
rights of my people equally dear w^itli the most valuable preroga- 
tive of my crown." And never, throughout the course of a long 
and anxious reign of sixty years, did his actions as a man or a 
prince contradict the boast. He was profoundly yet unaffectedly 
religious; his love of Christianity strongly displaying itself even 
in his sixteenth year, when he distributed within his own circle 
one hundred copies of Dr. Leland's View of deistical writers, 
written in contravention of their pernicious writings. George 
in. was likewise a lover of music, his favorite composer being 
Handel, and we have seen in the King's handwriting lengthy 
programmes of chamber concerts performed in Windsor Castle. 
He liberally patronized Cook, Byron, and Wallis, the navigators ; 
Herschel, the astronomer ; and West, the historical painter ; and 
he took a lively interest in the foundation of the Royal Academy 
of Arts. He collected a library of 80,000 volumes, the most 
complete ever formed by a single individual : it is now in the 
British Museum, and known as " the King's Library." His 
Majesty collected this library at Buckingham House. Dr. 
Johnson, by permission of the librarian, frequently consulted 
books. 

'• It is curious that the Royal collector (George ITT.) and his venerable librarian (Mr. 
Barnard) should have survived almost sixty years after commencing the formation of this, 
the most complete private library in Europe, steadily appropriating 2000/. pin- annum to 
this object, and adhering with scrupulous attention to the instructions of Dr. .lolinson, 
contained in the admirable letter printed by order of the Ilouse of Comm.ous." — Quarterly 
Review, June, 1826. 



138 School-Days of Eminent Men. 

To Johnson, Sheridan, Beattie, and Blair, George III. granted 
pensions ; he especially admired Dr. Johnson, who has recorded 
a long conversation with his majesty ; and after the interview, 
the Doctor observed to the royal librarian, " Sir, they may talk 
of the King as they will, he is the finest gentleman I have ever 
seen." He subsequently declared that " the King's manners 
were those of as fine a gentleman as one might suppose Louis 
the Fourteenth or Charles the Second to have been." 

SUNDAY SCHOOLS ESTABLISHED. 

One of the brightest ornaments of our Church has observed, 
with equal eloquence and truth, " The mainstay of religious edu- 
cation is to be found in our Sunday Schools — the most earnest, 
the most devoted, the most pious of our several congregations, 
are accustomed, with meritorious zeal, to dedicate themselves to 
this great work."* The founder of these invaluable institutions 
was Mr. Robert Raikes, the proprietor and editor of the Glou- 
cester Journal. His attention was first drawn to the wretched 
state of the prisoners in the bridewell at Gloucester, for want of 
religious and moral instruction ; and for this purpose, whenever 
he found one among the prisoners that was able to read, he set 
him to instruct his fellow-prisoners, and rewarded him for his 
trouble. Mr. Raikes next set to work in other quarters, and 
in 1783 wrote in his newspaper — " Some of the clergy in differ- 
ent parts of this county, bent upon attempting a reform among 
the children of the lower class, are establishing Sunday Schools 
for rendering the Lord's Day subservient to the ends of instruc- 
tion, w^hich has hitherto been prostituted to bad purposes." At 
this time, the streets were full of noise and disturbance every 
Sunday ; and the churches were unfrequented by the poorer sort 
of children, and very ill attended by their parents. To them 
Mr. Raikes proposed that their children should meet him at the 
early service performed in Gloucester Cathedral on a Sunday 
morning. The numbers at first were few, but their increase was 
rapid ; and Mr. Raikes soon found himself surrounded by such a 
set of little ragamuffins as would have disgusted teachers less 
zealous than the founder of Sunday Schools. The children soon 
began to look upon him with respect and affection, and were 
readily drilled into a decent observance of the outward ceremo- 
nies of religion. To prevent their running about the streets of 
the city after and between the services, masters and mistresses 
were engaged, by means of subscriptions, for a large number of 
children of both sexes to be educated in the principles of Chris- 
tianity. From this hour the system of Sunday Schools has gone 

* The Rev. Dr. Ilook, Vicar of Leeds, in his Letter to the Bishop of St. David's. 



Progress of Education, 1 

on most surely and rapidly developing, until it would be difficult 
to overrate the positive benefits which have been derived from 
it3 extension, until the present (1858) number of scholars has 
reached two millions and a half. 

THE MONITORIAL SYSTEM OF BELL AND LANCASTER. 

To each of these philanthropists (as in most similar claims) 
is attributed, by different authorities, the merit of being founder 
of the system which bears the name of the latter; but to Lan- 
caster is due the great public attention first bestowed on the sub- 
ject, and, we think, to Dr. Bell the first adoption of its principles. 
Whilst superintendent of the Military Orphan Asylum at 
Madras, in 1791, Dr. Bell one day observed a boy, belonging 
to a Malabar school, writing in the sand ; thinking that method 
of writing very convenient, both as regards cheapness and facility, 
he introduced it in the school of the asylum, and as the usher 
refused to teach by that method, he employed one of the cleverest 
boys to teach the rest. The experiment was so successful that 
he extended it to the other branches of instruction, and soon 
organized the whole school under boy-teachers, who were them- 
selves instructed by the Doctor. On his return to England he 
published a Report of the Madras Orphan Asylum, in which he 
particularly pointed out the new mode of school organization, as 
more efficient than the old. 

In the following year, 1798, Dr. Bell introduced the system 
into the school of St. Botolph, Aldgate, — then at Kendal ; and 
next he attempted, but with small success, to obtain its adoj3tion 
in Edinburgh. Settling soon after, as rector of Swanage, in 
Dorsetshire, he was secluded from the world for some years ; yet 
he retained his strong opinion of the value of the new system 
of education, and had the school at Swanage conducted on that 
plan. 

Meanwhile, Joseph Lancaster, son of a Chelsea pensioner in 
the Borough-road, London, opened a school in his father's house, 
in 1798, at the early age of eighteen. He had been usher in 
schools, and had made certain improvements in tuition ; and a 
pamphlet by Dr. Bell having fallen in his way, Lancaster 
adopted the Madras system, with alterations. Li 1802 he 
brought his school into a perfect state of organization, and found 
himself as able to teach 250 boys, with the aid of the senior 
boys as teachers, as before to teach 80. Lancaster was a mem- 
ber of the Society of Friends, and received much encourage- 
ment and assistance from them. His enthusiasm and benevo- 
lence led him to conceive the practicability of bringing all the 
children of the poor under education by the new system. He 




140 School-Days of Eminent 3Ien. 

published pamphlets recommending the plan, and in one of them 
ascribes the chief merit to Dr. Bell, whom he afterward visited 
at Swanage. His own school Lancaster made free, and obtained 
subscriptions from friends of education for its support. At 
length he ^vas admitted to an interview w^ith Georfije III. at 
Weymouth, in 1805, and his majesty being charmed with the 
order and efficiency of his schools, subscribed to the fund 100/. 
a-year, the Queen 50/., and the princesses 251. each, to be em- 
ployed in the extension of the Lancasterian system, to promote 
which a Society was formed under the patronage of the King.* 
Such was the origin of the British and Foreign School Society, 
originally "the Royal Lancasterian Listitution for promoting the 
Education of the Children of the Poor."t 

Dr. Bell's method in process of time was adopted in the Lam- 
beth schools by the Archbishop of Canterbury ; and in the 
Royal Military School at Chelsea; whilst numerous schools 
sprung into existence under what is known to this day as the 
3fadras System. The distinctive features of Bell's National 
Schools, and Lancaster's British and Foreign School systems 
were, that the religious instruction in the former was according 
to the formularies of the Established Church ; whilst the latter 
represented the Dissenting interests, admitting the reception of 
the Bible as the foundation of all instruction, but without note 
or comment. This still remains the essential difference betw^een 
the two societies, and the schools conducted on their principles. 

To these systems have since been added Normal and Model 
Schools ; and for the girls in these schools instruction in do- 
mestic economy and the duties of servants. 

In 1808, Dr. Bell endeavored to induce the Government to 
establish upon his plans "A National Board" of Education, 
with schools placed under the management of the parochial 
clergy. In this he failed ; but by aid of friends of the Estab- 
lished Church, and under the patronage of the bishops and clergy, 
the National Society was eventually formed in 181 1.| 

THE PRIMER AND THE HORNBOOK. 

The earliest printed book used in the tuition of youth was the 
Primer yPrimarius, Latin), a small prayer-book in which chil- 

* The noble wish of George III. — " that the day might come when every poor child 
in his dominions would be able to read the Bible "' — doubtless greatly assisted by the 
sanction of Royal Authority this new system of teaching, as well as the Bible Society 
established in 1804. 

t Lancaster resigned his direction of the school in 1808. He died in 1838, having been 
supported in his latter days solely by an annuity purchased for him by a few old and 
attached friends. 

_ X Br. Bell died in 1832, leaving the princely sum of 132,000t. for the encouragement of 
literature and the advancement of education. 



Progress of Education. 141 

tlren were taught to read — and the Romish book of devotions 
in the monastic schools. At the Reformation, the Primer was 
retained, but the requisite changes were made. In 1545, Henry 
VIII. ordered to be printed an English " form of Public Prayer,* 
entitled the Primer^ said to be " set furth by the Kinge's majes- 
tic and his clergie, to be taught, lerned, and red." A copy of 
this rare book is extant : it was once the property of Sir John 
Clark, priest of the chapel of Leedsbridge, and founder of the 
school. This appears from the following autograph note in 
the Calendar : " This day I began the schole at Leeds, July 4, 



)0. 



It would be hard to say when the contents of the Primer were 
changed from sacred to secular : the change was probably very 
gradual, more especially as the Primers printed to this day con- 
tain occasional prayers — the good seed which cannot be sown 
too early in the mind of childhood. The accounts of the gram- 
mar-schools of the sixteenth century contain much interesting 
evidence of the value attached to school-books, by the care 
which is directed to be taken of them. Thus, in the corporation 
records of Boston, in Lincolnshire, in L578, it was agreed that 
" a Dictionaryc shall be bought for the scollers of the Free 
Scoole ; and the same boke to be tyed in a cheque^ and set upon 
a de?k in the scoole, whereunto any scoller may have accesse as 
occasion shall serve." There are later entries of the Corpora- 
tion purchasing dictionaries for the use of the school; besides 
presents of dictionaries, lexicons, grammars, folio English Bibles, 
etc. — {^Thompson^s History of Boston.) 

Another " dumb teacher " was the Hornbook, of which a 
specimen exists, in black-letter, of the time of Queen Elizabeth. 
It appears to be at least as ancient as 1570, is mounted on wood, 
and protected with transparent horn. 

" The letters ma)' be read, through the horn., 
That make the story perfect." — Btn Jonson. 

There is a large cross, the criss-cross, and then the alphabet 
in large and small letters. The vowels follow next, and their 
combinations with the consonants ; and the whole is concluded 
with the Lord's Prayer and the Roman numerals. The Arabic 
numerals are not given. Shakspeare thus refers to the cross- 
row of the Horn-book : 

"He hearkens after prophecies and dreams ; 
And from the cross- row plucks the letter G ; 
And ays, a wizard told him that by G 
His issue disinherited should be." — Richard III. 

Again, in Love's Labor'' s Lost, act v. scene 1, Moth, the page 
to Armado, says, in describing Holofernes the schoolmaster, 
" He teaches boys the Hornbook." 



142 Sc7iool-Dai/s of Eminent Men, 

Cotgrave has, "Za Croix de par Dieii., the Christ's-cross-rowe, 
or horne-hooJce, wherein a child learnes it;" and Florio, ed. IGll, 
p. 93, " Centuruola, a childes horne-booke hanging at his girdle." 

In the collection of Sir Thomas Phillipps, at Middlehill, are 
two genuine Horn-books of the reigns of Charles I. and II. 
Locke, in his Hioughts on Education, speaks of the "ordinary 
road of the Hornbook and Primer," and directs that "the Lord's 
Prayer, the Creed, and the Ten Commandments he should learn 
by heart, not by reading them himself in his Primer, but by 
somebody's repeating them before he can read." 

Shenstone, who was taught to read at a dame-school, near 
Halesowen, in Shropshire, in his delightfully quaint poem of the 
Schoolmistress, commemorating his venerable preceptress, thus 
records the use of the Hornbook: 

" Lo ; now wifh state she utters her command ; 
Eftsoous the urchins to their tasks repair ; 
Their books of stature small thej- take in hand, 
AVhich with pellucid horn secured are 
To save from finger wet the letters fair." 

Cowper thus describes the Hornbook of his time: 

" Neatly secured from heing soiled or torn 
Beneath a pane of thin translucent horn, 
A book (to please- us at a tender age 
'Tis called a book, though but a single page) 
Presents the prayer the Saviour deigned to teach. 
Which children use, and parsons — when they preach." 
• Tirocinium, or a Review of Schools, 1784. 

We have somewhere read a story of a mother tempting her 
son along the cross-row by giving him an apple for each letter he 
learnt. This brings us to the gingerbread alphabet of our own 
time, which appears to have been common a century and a half 
since : 

" To master John the English maid 
A Hornbook gives of gingerbread : 
And, that the child may learn the better, 
As he can name, he eats the letter."' — Prior. 

An anecdote illustrative of Lord Erskine's readiness is related 
— that, when asked by a judge if a single sheet could be called a 
book, he replied, "The common Hornbook, my lord." 



Prog7'ess of Education. 



143 



^r^ff f| ^ ii p|.:^f i fy|jl!f!!-#|fl ' !|i!|^ 




+ A al) c iUi^^ jkJ mn op q^ 
JVB^ JD E F G HIJKLM:N^ P Q. 

a e i on : a. e i o u 

ah eb ib iOlVxil) ial)eii"bo liu 

ac -ec ic oe. itc ca, ce ci co eu 

ad ed id od iid da de^di do du 



la the Nmxe of the 

5on' arvcT of ' tlie, H/dy Ghoft. ^w w 



JL.of tJne 



.dr: 



.wMcli art ir« 



\\^ 



rareni Kalb"wed "be t'hy 
\amV : thj^ EirigdoTn Gome^ thy 
To^vcloiie on lEaath, as it is ii^{ 
HesWiiX Giye us this- day ooiV 
dsaly B3;eadi; ajidj fongive its oux 
'Tref patt^WiiS ^e foTgiye tl\ein 
^bat tTefpa£s\agc\mftTts : And" 
leadus not inrdt Temjit-atiou. bat 
3-eJ i ver ais from . Bviil . Amen . 



1*1 



i^^ 



!-ii 







nOR>'BOOK OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

In Specimens of West Country Dialect, the use of the Horn- 
hook is thus shown: 

" Conimether, Billy Chubby an breng the hornen book. Gee ma the vester in tha win- 
dor, you Pal Came ! — what I be a sleepid— I'll wake 3-e. Now. Billy, there's a good bway '. 
Ston still there, and mind what I da za to ye, an whaur I da point. Now ; cris-cross, girt a, 
little a — b — c— d. Thafs right, Billy : you'll zoon lorn the criss-cross-lain — you'll zoon 
auvergit Eobby Jiffry — you'll zoon be a scholard. A's a pirty chubby bway — Lord love'n 1" 

John Britton, -vvho was born in the parish of Kington St. 
Michael's, Wilts, in 1771, tells us, in his Autobiography ^ that he 
was placed with a schoolmistress : "here," he writes, "I learnt 
'the Christ-cross-row' from a Hornbook, on which were the 
alphabet in large and small letters, and the nine figures in Ro- 



144 Scliool-Bays of Eminent 3Ien. 

man and Arabic numerals. The Hornbook is now a rarity." 
Such a Hornbook is engraved on the preceding page. It was met 
with in the year 1850, among the old stock of a bookseller at Peter- 
borough, in Lincolnshire, and is thus described : Its dimensions 
are 9 by 5 inches. The alphabet, etc., are printed upon white 
paper, which is laid upon a thin piece of oak, and is covered with 
a sheet of horn, secured in its place by eight tacks, driven 
through a border or mounting of brass; the object of this horn- 
covering being to keep the " book," or rather leaf, unsoiled. The 
first line is a cross-row; so named, says Johnson, "because a 
cross is placed at the beginning, to show that the end of learning 
is piety." 

The Hornbook was not always mounted on a board; many 
were pasted on the back of the horn only, like one used five-and- 
forty years ago by a friend, when a boy at Bristol. 

Such was the rudeness of the "dumb teacher" formerly em- 
ployed at the dame-school, and elsewhere. It was, in all proba- 
bility, superseded by Dr. Bell's sand-tray, upon which the 
children traced their own letters. Next came the " Battledore" 
and "Reading-made-Easy;" though the Spelling-book is con- 
siderably older than either. The Battledore, by the way, re- 
minds us of a strategy of tuition mentioned by Locke: "By 
pasting the vowels and consonants on the sides of four dice, he 
has made this a play for his children, whereby his eldest son in 
coats has played himself into spelling." 

PROGRESS OF EDUCATION IN THE REIGNS OF GEORGE IV. 

AND WILLIAM IV. 

There is little to interest the reader in the early personal his- 
tories of these sovereigns. George the Fourth, the eldest son of 
George the Third and Queen Charlotte, was born at Bucking- 
ham House, in 1762. At the age of three years he received an 
address from the Society of Ancient Britons, and was made a 
Knight of the Garter. In a few months after, he was appointed 
by a King's letter, addressed to the Lord Mayor, Captain-Gen- 
eral of the Honorable Artillery Company of the City of London. 
He learned his nursery tasks at Kew-house, or the old jmlace 
at Kew, where the royal family lived, as Miss Burney says, 
"running about from one end of the house to the other, without 
precaution or care." The prince's first governor was the Earl 
of Holdernesse; Dr. Markham, Bishop of Chester (afterward 
Archbishop of York), was the prince's preceptor; and Mr. Cyril 
Jackson, sub-preceptor. These gentlemen, however, suddenly 
resigned their offices, it is believed from their having found some 
pohtical works, which they considered objectionable, put into 



Progress of Education. 145 

the hands of their pupil by direction of the Kinj:^. His next 
preceptor was Dr. Hurd, Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, 
afterward of Worcester; with the Rev. William Arnold as sub- 
preceptor; both these tutors being Cambridge men. The prince 
was kept by his father in a state of unmitigated pupilage till he 
was nearly eighteen, soon after which he appeared in public, 
and fell into dissolute habits, which deeply embittered his after 
life. 

George the Fourth affected patronage of painting and archi- 
tecture ; the results of the latter are best seen in the highly em- 
bellished w^estern quarter of London. His encouragement of 
letters and learned men was narrow and partisan ; he was the 
first patron of the Literary Fund, to which he contributed up- 
ward of 5000/.; in the Society's armorial bearings is "the Prince 
of Wales's plume." By his bounty, the Latin manuscript of 
Milton, discovered in the State Paper Office in 1823, was edited, 
and a translation published. The King also chartered, in 1826, 
the Royal Society of Literature, and contributed from the Privy 
Purse 1100 guineas a-year to its funds; though it should be 
added, that he was committed to this large annual subscription 
by a misconception of Dr. Burgess, Bishop of Salisbury, the 
King intending a donation of 1000 guineas, and an annual sub- 
scription of 100 guineas; though his majesty cheerfully ac- 
quiesced,* and amused himself with the incident. He also 
granted the Society the Crown land upon which their house is 
built in St. Martin's-place ; and as if to show that he did not 
restrict his patronage to the higher aim of letters, there is prom- 
inently inscribed upon the exterior fa9ade of the Ptirochial 
School of St. Martin's, "built upon the ground the gift of His 
Majesty King George the Fourth." 

In this reign, in 1826, was founded the Society for "the Dif- 
fusion of Useful Knowledge," under the chairmanship of Lord 
Broughara.t This was followed by the founding, in London, of 
University College and School, in 1828, for affording "literary 
and scientific education at a moderate expense," divinity not 
being taught ; and in the same year was founded King's College 
and School, for education in the principles of the Established 
Church. 

William the Fourth, next brother to George the Fourth, was 
born at St. James's Palace in 1764, and was educated at Kew. 

* This costly munificence has not been followed by the successors of the sovereign. 

t The name and title of the Society was, however, first wriften in conjunction with the 
author of the present volume, at Brighton, in the autumn of 1824 : and early in 1826 
Nicholson's Operative Mechanic was published " under the superintendence of the Society 
for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.'' 

10 



146 ScJiool-Days of Eminent Men, 

When a child at play, his favorite amusement was floating a toy- 
ship, which one day led him to say, with prophetic boast, " If 
ever I shall become a king, I will have a house full of ships, 
and no other King shall dare to take them from me ! " The 
King, his father, encouraged him to enter the naval service ; and 
at the age of fourteen,* he swung his first hammock on board the 
Prince George, 98 guns, under the command of Admiral Digby, 
where he was furnished as scantily as any youngster of the mess. 
His entire service at sea extended nearly to eleven years ; its 
most interesting incident was his intimacy with the gallant 
Nelson, from whom, in the prince's own words, his " mind tcok 
its first decided naval turn." This predilection lasted through- 
out his long life ; he was some time Lord High Admiral, and 
after his accession to the throne was familiarly styled " the Sailor 
King." 

In his reign, in 1833, greatly through the influence of Lord 
Brougham and his party, upon the report of a Parliamentary 
Committee, the first annual grant for educational purposes was 
made by the Government; and in 1836 was formed the Home 
and Colonial Infant School Society, upon the principle that edu- 
cation must be based on the knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, 
and as set forth and embodied in the doctrinal articles of the 
Church of England. In the following year was formed a " Cen- 
tral Society of Education," principally for the collection and 
publication of facts, and bringing prominently forward the dis- 
tinction between general and special religious instruction. 



Here this historic sketch of the Progress of Education in 
England may be closed. The history of National Education 
during the last twenty years scarcely belongs to the object of the 
present volume. It may, however, be interesting to quote a few 
of its leading events. In the autumn of 1838, Lord Brougham 
lamented what he considered as the final and hopeless failure of 
his life-long efforts in the cause of Popular Education.! But 

* West painted the prince's portrait at this age, in a family picture now in Hampton 
Court Palace. 

t Lord Brougham received his education at Edinburgh, which, in 1857, he declared 
in public, he looked upon as a very great benefit conferred on him by Providence. 
Within a few days of this occasion, at the opening of the University of Edinburgh, Prinr 
cipal Lee, in his introductory address, gave a short account of the school-days of Lord 
Brougham. "Though descended," he said, "from an ancient English family, he was 
born in Edinburgh, and his mother was a niece of Principal Robertson. In 1786, when 
seven years old, he entered the High School, in a class of 164 boys : and he had the advant- 
age of being instructed by Mr. Luke Fraser, who was 40 years a favorite teacher, under 
whose inspection Sir Walter Scott had commenced his classical studie-J, along with the late 
Lord Melville, in the year 1777. The late Lord Jeffrey became a pupil of the same master 
in 1781. Among the school-fellows of Henry Brougham (amounting, as I have said, to 



Progress of Education. 147 

early in the subsequent year, a Committee of Council was ap- 
pointed to dispense the annual Government grant for education, 
and the amount was increased to 30,000/. a year. The next 
step was the establishment of Normal Schools under Govern- 
ment inspection. This was followed by the foundation of Train- 
ing Schools and Colleges, for the education and training of 
Schoolmasters and Schoolmistresses, by apprenticeship as pupil- 
teachers, and other means. And to provide for the children of 
the destitute poor, " Ragged Schools " have been established 
with great success, the scheme commencing with a poor shoe- 
maker at Portsmouth. 

Lastly, in June, 1857, was held in London, under the Presi- 
dency of the Prince Consort, " A Conference of the Friends of 
the Education of the Working Classes, on the Early Age at 
which, children are taken from School." 

164) were several youths afterward highly eminent, of whom I make special mention of 
James Abercromby, afterward Speaker of the House of Commons, now Lord Dunfermline ; 
and Joseph Muter, subsequently recognized by the title of Sir Joseph Straton, one of the 
greatest benefactors of this University, Lord Brougham was ' dux ' of the rector's class 
in 1191. I personally know how pre-eminently conspicuous at this University his at- 
tainments were, not in one or two branches of study, but in all to which his attention 
was directed, and particularly in mathematics and natural philosophy, as well as in law, 
in metaphysics, and in political science. Some of these shreds of information may not 
be familiarly known to every one, but I allude no further to a biography which'is already, 
to a great extent, written in our national history." In a later portion of his address, the 
Principal, who himself entered the University as a pupil in 1794:. enumerated the lol- 
lowing as having been educated there, cotemporaneously wich, or subsequently to, 
Lord Brougham : — Thomas M'Crie, the historian ; George Cranstoun (Lord Corehouse), 
Mountstuart Elphinstone, Peter Roget, George Birkbeck, Sir David Brewster, Francis 
Horner, Henry Cockburn, Henry Petty (now Marquis of Lansdowne), John Leyden, 
Henry Temple (now Lord Palmerston), the Earl of Haddington, Lord Webb Seymour, 
Lord Dudley, the Earl of Minto, Lord Glenelg, Lord Langdale, and Lord John Kussell. 



SCHOOL-DAYS OF EMINENT MEN- 



%mtMt '§w^x^\m. 



EARLY FORTUNES OF WILLIAM OP WTKEHAM. 

THIS celebrated ecclesiastic, statesman, and architect, was 
born at Wykeham, or Wickham, in Hampshire, in 1324, of 
parents who, although poor, were of creditable descent, as well 
as of respectable character. He was put to school at Winches- 
ter, not by his father, who was without the means, but by some 
wealthy patron, who is traditionally said to have been Nicholas 
Uvedale, governor of Winchester Castle. The tradition further 
asserts, that after leaving school, he became Secretary to Uve- 
dale ; and that he was Secretary to the Constable of Winchester 
Castle is stated in a written account compiled in his own time. 
Afterward he is said to have been recommended by Uvedale to 
Edyngton, bishop of Winchester, and then by these two friends 
to have been made known to King Edward HI. There seems 
to be no reason for supposing that ho ever studied at Oxford, as 
has been affirmed. It is evident, indeed, that he had not re- 
ceived a university education, and that he never pretended to 
any skill in the favorite scholastic learning of his age. He is 
designated " clericus," or clerk, in 1352. It was, however, by 
his skill in architecture that Wykeham was, in the short space 
of 21 years, promoted to be Bishop of Winchester and Lord 
High Chancellor of these realms. Of the colleges which he 
built, that at Winchester has been renowned as a seat of learn- 
ing through nearly five centuries, and its scholars have been 
known as Wykehamites. And when his growing honors re- 
quired that Wykeham should adopt a coat of arms, he chose the 
famous motto : 

which has been written upon the top-beam of our Tudor halls, 



150 School-Bays of Eminent 3Ien. 

and has descended as household words from an age of feudalism 
to our own times of enlightened free-will. 

WILLIAM CAXTON, THE FIRST ENGLISH PRINTER. 

In the records of the boyhood and after-life of Caxton, which 
are chiefly to be gathered from his own hand, we obtain some 
interesting glimpses of the state of our language in the reigns 
of Henry V. and VL, before a single book had been printed in 
England. Caxton's birth is stated at about the year 1412, or, 
as he tells us : "I was born and learned mine English in Kent 
in the "Weald, where I doubt not is spoken as broad and rude 
English as in any place in England." His father, a proprietor 
of land, bestowed upon him all the advantages of education 
which that rude age could furnish ; to which he refers with sim- 
ple gratitude in his Life of Charles the Great, printed in 1485, 
wherein he says : 

"I have specially reduced (translated) it after the simple cunning that God hath lent 
to me, whereof I humbly and with all my heart thank Iliui, and also am bounden to 
pray for my father's and mother's souls, that in my youth set me to school, by which, 
by the sufferance of God, I get my Uving I hope truly." 

Half a century before Caxton's boyhood, the children in the 
grammar-school were not taught English at all, but French, 
so as to make the people familiar with Norman-French, the 
language of their conquerors ; and it was the translating, or 
procuring to be translated, a great number of books from the 
French into English, as the latter became more employed, as 
well as the reduction of rude and broad English into the Eng- 
lish of his time ; and the reconciliation of the varieties of Eng- 
lish spoken in diflferent shires, and the simplification of " over 
curious terms" — which formed Caxton's business in after-life. 
Of his school-days we have no positive record. He was put 
apprentice to one Robert Large, a considerable mercer or mer- 
chant, of London. Books were now so costly that there was 
no special trade of bookselhng ; but the stationers probably 
executed orders for transcribing books. The mercers or mer- 
chants, in their traflSc with other lauds, were the agents by which 
valuable manuscripts found their way into England, and books 
were part of their commerce. Caxton, from his knowledge of 
business, became a traveling agent or factor in the countries of 
Brabant, Flanders, Holland, and Zealand ; he resided abroad 
for some years, there translated several works, and in the Low 
Countries learnt the art of printing, which he brought to Eng- 
land in 1474, and there printed in the Almonry, in Westminster, 
and subsequently in King-street. All Caxton's works were 
printed in black letter ; the two largest assemblages of the pro- 



Anecdote ^iograjMes. 151 

ductions of his press now known are those in the British Mu 
seuna, and in Earl Spencer's library at Althorpe.* 

BOYHOOD AND RISE OF SIR THOMAS MORE. 

Among the eminent men of one of the most remarkable peri- 
ods of English history is Sir Thomas More, the records of whose 
early life throw some light upon the education of the time. 
More was born in Milk-street, Cheapside, in 1480, five years 
before the accession of Henry VII. to the throne. He was 
taught the first rudiments of education at St. Anthony's Free 
Grammar-school, in Threadneedle-street, one of the four gram- 
mar-schools founded by Henry VI., and at that period the most 
famous in London. Here More soon outstripped all his young 
companions, and made great proficiency in Latin, to which his 
studies were confined, Greek not being then taught in schools. 

It was the good custom of the age that the sons of the gentry, 
even of persons of rank, should spend part of their early years 
in the houses of the nobility, where they might profit by listen- 
ing to the wisdom of their elders, and become accustomed, by 
the performance of humble and even menial ofifices, to stern dis- 
cipline and implicit obedience. The internal economy of a great 
man's family, resembling on a smaller scale that of the monarch, 
was thought to be the proper school for acquiring the manners 
most conducive to success at court. Persons of good condition 
were, consequently, eager to place their sons in the families of 
the great, as the surest road to fortune. In this station it was 
not accounted degrading to submit even to menial service ; -while 
the greatest barons of the realm were proud to officiate as 
stewards, cup-bearers, and carvers to the monarch, a youth of 
good family could wait at table, or carry the train of a man of 
high condition, without any loss of dignity. To profit by such 
discipline, More, when about fourteen years of age, was removed 
from school to the palace of Cardinal Morton, archbishop of 
Canterbury and lord high chancellor. Here he attracted notice 
among the Cardinal's retinue, and was pointed out by him to the 
nobility who frequented his house, as a boy of extraordinary 
promise. "This child waiting at table," he would say, "whoso- 
ever shall live to see it, will prove a marvellous man." Listen- 
ing daily to the conversation, and observing the conduct of such 
a personage. More naturally acquired more extensive views of 
men and things than any other course of education could, in that 
backward age, have supplied. Dean Colet, a visitor at the Car- 
dinal's, used to say, "there is but one wit in England, and that is 
young Thomas More." 

. * See ilr. Charles Knight's delightful Biography of Caxton, in The Old Printer an 
the Modern Press. 1854. 



152 School-Days of Eminent Men. 

At the age of seventeen. More was sent by his patron to 
Oxford, where he studied Greek, which was then publicly taught 
in the University, though not without opposition. While at Ox- 
ford, More composed the greater number of his English poems, 
which Ben Jonson speaks of as some of the best in the English 
language. More retained his love of learning throughout life ; 
and when he had risen to the highest offices, he frequently com- 
plained to his friend Erasmus, of being obliged to leave his 
friends and his books to discharge what were to him disagreeable 
commissions. 

The plan of Education which More adopted in his own family, 
and his enlightened views on the Education of all Classes, have 
been already sketched at pp. 62-63 of the present volume. 

THE POETS WYATT AND SURREY. 

Sir Thomas Wyatt, the poet, was born at Allington Castle, 
near Maidstone, in 1503. All that is known of his youth is, 
that at 12 years old he entered St. John's College, Cambridge, 
and that he took out his degrees of Bachelor and Master in 1518 
and 1520. About 1524, Wyatt was introduced at court, where 
he was received into the King's household; in 1533, he officiated 
as ewerer for his father at the coronation of Anne Boleyn, upon 
which occasion his friend Surrey, then about 16 years of age, 
carried the fourth sword with the scabbard before the King. 
Wyatt travelad much on the continent; he possessed great con- 
versational powers, and is said to have combined the wit of Sir 
Thomas More with the wisdom of Sir Thomas Cromwell.* His 
political knowledge and sound judgment acquired for him a 
higli reputation as a statesman and diplomatist ; and his scholar- 
ship was in advance of most men of his time. Camden bears 
testimony to the extent and accuracy of his classical attain- 
ments: he spoke French, Italian, and Spanish fluently ; excelled 
in music; and was pre-eminent for skill and dexterity in arms. 
Surrey has left a portrait of Wyatt, and rarely have so many 
noble qualities been connected into a single character — virtue, 
wisdom, beauty, strength, and courage. His letters to his son, 
written from Spain, exhibit close observation of life ; and con- 
tain a whole code of maxims for the government of conduct, 
based on sound religious principles. He co-operated with Surrey 
in "correcting the ruggedness" of English poetry: it is said that 
they were devoted friends, and Surrey's lines on the death of 
Wyatt seem to indicate a close and intimate intercourse. 

* One of Wyatt'a common sajings was, that there were three things which should 
always be strictly observed : " Never to play with any man's unhappiness or deformity, for 
that is inhuman ; nor ou superiors, for that is saucy and undutiful ; nor on holy matters, 
for that is irreligious." 



Aneedote Biographies. 153 

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, exercised great influence on 
our poetry. "He founded," says Mr. Bell, "a new era in our 
versification, purified and strengthened our poetical diction, and 
carefully shunning the vices of his predecessors, set the example 
of a style in which, for the first time, verbal pedantry and fan- 
tastical devices were wholly ignored. He was also the first 
writer of English blank verse, and the sonnet, and the first poet 
who understood and exemplified the art of translation." The 
poet became Earl of Surrey on the accession of his father to 
the Dukedom of Norfolk in 1524; he is thought to have been 
born about 1517. He was placed at court, about the person of 
Henry YHI., at the early age of 15, but it is uncertain whether 
he studied at college. His boyhood was passed in the society 
of such men as Lord Berners, the translator of Froissart ; Vere, 
Earl of Oxford ; Lord Stafford, Lord Morley, and others equally 
distinguished by their literary attainments. Surrey, in his child- 
hood, was always sent during the winter months to Hunsdon, 
one of the estates of his grandfather, the Duke of Norfolk, in 
Hertfordshire. This seat, about 1536, became the residence of 
Princess Mary ; with her was living the fair Geraldine, with 
whom Surrey fell in love, and her name is indissolubly united 
with his in many a legend in prose and verse, wherein he show- 
ed "the noblest qualities of chivalry blended with the graces 
of learning and a cultivated taste." Having traveled into Italy, 
he became a devoted student of the poets of that country — 
Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, and Ariosto — and formed his own 
poetical style on theirs. 

Surrey, among his general accomplishments, appears to have 
cultivated the study of heraldry, which helped to bring him to 
the block; for the chief charge against him by his enemies was 
his having illegally quartered on his escutcheon the arms of Ed- 
ward the Confessor, which, however, he was entitled to do. He 
was beheaded on Tower-hill, January 21, 1547. 

LORD BURLEIGH AT CAMBRIDGE. 

That truly great statesman, William Cecil, Lord Burleigh, 
descended from an ancient and respectable family, was born at 
Bourne, in Lincolnshire, in the year 1520. Both his father and 
grandfather held honorable appointments under Henry VIIL 
During his early education, his progress either exhibited noth- 
ing remarkable, or has been overlooked by his biographers, 
amidst the splendor of his succeeding transactions ; for we are 
merely informed that he received the first rudiments of learning 
at the grammar-school of Grantham and Stamford. But at St. 
John's College, Cambridge, to which he was removed in the 



154 School-Days of Eminent Men. 

fifteenth Year of his age, he gave strong indications of the quali- 
ties calcuhited to raise him to future eminence. Here he was 
distincruished bv the re^uhiritv of his conduct, and the intensity 
of his application. That he might daily devote several hours 
to study without any hazard of interruption, he made an agree- 
ment with the bell-ringer to be called up every morning at four 
o'clock. Through this extreme application, without proper in- 
tervals of exercise, he, however, contracted a painful distemper, 
which led to his being afflicted with gout in the latter part of his 
life. 

His indefatigable industry at college, and his consequent pro- 
ficiency, was marked by occasional presents from the Master. 
He began, at sixteen, to put in practice the method, then usual, 
of acquiring literary celebrity, by delivering a public lecture. 
His first topic was the logic of the schools : and three years 
afterward he ventured to comment on the Greek language. He 
was subsequently ambitious of excelling as a general scholar ; 
and successively directed his industry to the various branches of 
literature then cultivated at the university. 

At twenty-one he entered Gray's Inn, where he applied him- 
self to the study of the law with the same method and industry 
as he had observed at Cambridge. He found leisure also for 
several collateral pursuits: the antiquities of the kingdom, and 
more especially the pedigrees and fortunes of the most distin- 
guished fiimilies, occupied much of his attention ; and such was 
his progress in these pursuits, that no man of his, time was ac- 
counted a more complete adept in heraldry. This species of 
information, had he adhered to his destination for the bar, might 
have been of little utility ; but in his career of a statesman, it 
often proved of essential advantage. 

His practice was to record with his pen eTerything worthy of notice which occurred to 
him either in reading or observation, arranging this observation in the most methodical 
manner. — a singular example of diligence, which is authenticated to posterity by collec- 
tions of his manuscripts, still preserved in many public and private libraries. While from 
this practice he derived, besides other advantages, an uncommon facility in committing his 
thoughts to writing, he neglected not to cultivate an accomplishment still more essential 
to his intended profession — a ready and graceful enunciation. By frequenting various 
companies, acd entering into free discussion, he learned to express himself with ease and 
confidence ; while the extent of his information, and the soundness of his judgment, pre- 
vented his fluency from degenerating into declamation. — MacJiannid's British StaUsmeri. 

Such was the educational basis upon which Cecil laid the 
foundation of his brilliant but sound reputation; and by which 
means, conjoined with the strong natural gift of sagacity, and a 
mind tinctured with piety, he acquired the esteem and confidence 
successively of three sovereigns, and held the situation of prime 
minister of England for upward of half a century. His sole 
literary production was a volume of Precepts or Directions for 



Anecdote BiograpJdei, 155 

the Well- Ordering and Carriage of a Man's Life, addressed to 
his son. 

Camden's schools. 

Camden, one of the most illustrious of learned Englishmen, 
was born May 22, lool, in the Old Bailey, where his father was 
a painter-stainer. lie died when his son was but a child, and 
left little provision for him. Dr. Smith, in his Life of Camden, 
mentions his early admission into Christ's Hospital as a fact not 
well authenticated, but very generally believed ; and the imper- 
fect state of the records does not admit of its verification. At 
all events, an attack of the plague caused his removal in 15G3 ; 
and after his recovery, he was sent to St. Paul's School, and 
thence to Magdalen College, Oxford, in 15GG. — Trollope's His- 
tory of Christ's Hospital. 

Wood, in his Athence Oxonienses, states positively that " when 
this most eminent person was a child, he received the first knowl- 
edge of letters in Christchurch Hospital in London, then newly 
founded for blue-coated children, where, being fitted for gram- 
mar-learning, he was sent to the free school, founded by Dr. 
Colet, near to St. Paul's Cathedral." Thence he removed to 
Oxford, where he studied in more than one college. He left the 
university in 1571, and became an under-master of Westminster 
School, the duties of which he discharged at the time when 
he composed the works which have made his name so eminent. 
The most celebrated of these are his Britannia, a survey of the 
British Isles ; and his Annals of the reign of Elizabeth ; both 
WTitten in pure and elegant Latin. Camden was now looked 
upon as one of the most distinguished scholars of his age : he is 
termed " the Pausanias of England." He was made head-mas- 
ter of "Westminster School in 1592: he had among his scholars. 
Ben Jonson ; he wTOte a small Greek Grammar for the use of 
the school ; and shortly before his death, he founded an histori- 
cal lecture in the Lniversity of Oxford. He died in 1G23, and 
was interred in Westminster Abbey, a great assemblage of the 
learned and illustrious doing him honor at his funeral. 

To Camden, Ben Jonson dedicated his first play, Every Man 
in his Humor ; hoping, to use his own words in addressing his 
Master, " that the confession of my studies might not repent 
you to have been my instructor ; for the profession of my thank- 
fulness, I am sure it will, with good men, find either praise or 
excuse. Your true lover, Ben Jonson." 

The career of Camden strikingly illustrates the benefits of 
English school foundations. Left a poor orphan, he was one of 
the first boys admitted into Christ's Hospital, where he sowed 



156 School-Bays of Eminent Men, 

the seed of that learning which was matured in the University 
of Oxford, and employed for the advantage of the next genera- 
tion in his mastership at Westminster. He left to the Pain- 
ter-Stainers' Company, of which his father was a member, 
a silver loving-cup, which is produced on every St. Luke's 
Day feast. 

SIR EDWARD COKE's LEGAL STUDIES. 

This celebrated lord-chief-justice was born in 1551-2, at 
Mileham, Norfolk, in which county the Cokes had been settled 
for many generations. His father, who was a bencher of Lin- 
coln's Inn, sent him to the Free Grammar-school at Norwich, 
whence, in 1567, he removed to Trinity College, Cambridge. 
After having spent three years at the University, he went to 
London, to commence his legal education : he became a member 
of CliiFord's Inn, and in 1572 was admitted into the Inner Tem- 
ple ; here he entered into a laborious course of study, which Lord 
Campbell thus vividly describes : 

Every morning at three, in the winter season lighting his own fire, he read Bracton, 
Littleton, the Year Books, and the folio Abridgments of the Law, till the Courts met at 
eight. He then went by water to Westminster, and heard cases argued till twelve, when 
pleas ceased for dinner. After a short repast in the Inner Temple Hall, he attended 
" readings " or lectures in the afternoon, and then resumed his private studies till five, 
or Bupper-time. This meal being ended, the moots took place, when difficult questions of 
law were proposed and discussed, — if the weather was fine, in the garden by the river 
side; if it rained, in the covered walks near the Temple Church. Finally, he shut him- 
self up in his chamber, and worked at his common-place book, in which he inserted, 
under the proper heads, all the legal information he had collected during the day. 
When nine o'clock struck, he retired to bed, that he might have an equal portion of 
sleep before and after midnight. The Globe and other theatres were rising into repute, 
but he would never appear at any of them ; nor would he indulge in such unprofitable 
reading as the poems of Lord Surrey or Spenser. When Shakspeare and Ben Jon.son 
came into such Jashion that even '' sad apprentices of the law ■' occasionally assisted in 
masques and wrote prologues, he most steadily eschewed all such amusements ; and it 
is supposed that in the whole course of his life he never saw a play acted, or read a play, 
or was in company with a player ! 

To Coke's merits there cannot be a more direct testimony 
than that of his great rival. Sir Francis Bacon, who speaks of 
his great industry and learning in terms of high and deserved 
commendation ; and justly ascribes to him the praise of having 
preserved the vessel of the common law in a steady and consis- 
tent course. 

We gather what the fare of the Universities was about this 
period, from the following description of Cambridge, given at 
St. Paul's Cross, in the year 1550, by Thomas Lever, soon after 
made Master of St. John's College : 

•' There be divers there at Cambridge which rise daily betwixt four and five of the 
clock in the morning, and from five until six of the clock use common prayer, with 
an exhortation of God's word in a common chapel ; and from six until ten of the 
clock use either private study or common lectures. At ten of the clock, they go to din- 
ner ; whereas they be content with a penny piece of beef amongst four, having a few 
pottage made of the broth of the same beef, with salt and oatmeal, and nothing else. 



Anecdote Biographies. 157 

After this slender dinner, they be either teaching or learning until five of the clock in 
thTevenng, when they have a supper not much better than their dinner Immediately 
after the which they go either to reasoning in problems or into some other study, un- 
filTt be nine or ten of the clock ; and then being without fire are fain to walk or run up 
and down half an hour, to get a heat on their feet, when they go to bed. 

«Sse be men not weary of their pains, but very sorry to leave their study ; and 
sure they be not able some of them to continue for lack of necessary exhibition and 
relief." 

SPENSER AT CAMBRIDGE. 

Edmund Spenser, one of the gi'eat landmarks of English 
poetry, was born in East Smithfield, near the Tower, about the 
year 1553 ; as he sings in his Prothalamion : 

Merry London, my most kindly nurse, 
That gave to me this life's first native source. 
Though from another place I take my name, 
An house of ancient fame. 

The rank of his parents, or the degree of his affinity with the 
ancient house of Spenser, is not fully established. Gibbon says : 
« The nobility of the Spensers has been illustrated and enriched 
by the trophies of Marlborough ; but I exhort them^ to consider 
the Faery Queen as the most precious jewel in their coronet." 
The poet was entered a sizar (one of the humblest class of stu- 
dents) of Pembroke College, Cambridge, in 1569, and continued 
to attend college for seven years. " Of his proficiency during 
this time," says Johnson, " a favorable opinion may be drawn 
from the many classical allusions in his works." At Cambridge, 
he became intimate with Gabriel Harvey, the future astrologer, 
who induced the poet to repair to London, and there introduced 
him to Sir Philip Sidney, "one of the very diamonds of her 
Majesty's court." Of Spenser it has been well said that he and 
Chaucer are the only poets before Shakspeare who have given 
to the language anything that in its kind has not been surpassed, 
and in some sort superseded— Chaucer in his Canterbury Tales, 
and Spenser in his Faery Queen. Spenser is thought to have 
been known as a votary of the Muses among his fellow-students 
at Cambridge : there are several poems in a Theatre for World- 
lings, a collection published in the year in which he became a 
member of the University, which are believed to have come from 
his pen. 

RICHARD HOOKER AT HEAVITREE. 

The boyhood of Richard Hooker, the learned and judicious 
divine, and the earliest and one of the most distinguished prose- 
writers of his time, presents some interesting traits. He was 
born at Heavitree, near Exeter, about 1553, of parents " not so 
remarkable for their extraction or riches, as for their virtue and 
industry, and God's blessing upon both." When a child, he was 



158 Scliool-Days of Eminent Men. 

grave in manner and expression. By the kindness of his uncle, 
he obtained a better education at school than his parents could 
have afforded ; and when a school-boy, " he was an early ques- 
tionist, quietly inquisitive, Why this was, and that ivas not, to he 
remembered ? Why this was granted, and that denied ? " Hence 
his schoolmaster persuaded his parents, who intended him for an 
apprentice, to continue him at school, the good man assuring 
them that he would double his diligence in instructing him." 
" And in the mean time his parents and master laid a foundation 
for his future happiness, by instilling into his soul the seeds of 
piety, those conscientious principles of loving and fearing God ; 
of an early belief that he knows the very secrets of our souls ; 
that he punishes our vices, and rewards our innocence; that we 
should be free from hypocrisy, and appear to men wdiat we are 
to God, because, first or last, the crafty man is catcht in his own 
snare." Jewel, bishop of Salisbury, next took Hooker under 
his care, sent him to Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and con- 
tributed to his support. Having entered into holy orders, he 
was appointed Master of the Temple, London ; and the church 
contains a bust erected by the benchers to his memory. Hooker's 
most celebrated work is his treatise on " Ecclesiastical Polity," 
a powerful defense of the Church of England ; and the first 
publication in the English language which presented a train of 
clear logical reasoning. 

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY, "THE ENGLISH PETRARCH." 

Sir Philip Sidney — a name which most educated Englishmen 
have learnt to admire and love — was born in 1554, at Penshurst 
Place, in Kent, where an oak, planted to commemorate the event, 
flourishes to this day. 

Young Sidney was placed at the Free Grammar-school of 
Shrewsbury.* While there, his father, Sir Henry Sidney, " a 
man of great parts," addressed a letter to him, in 1566, full of 
sterling advice. His biographer and companion. Lord Brooke, 
states that at this early age, Philip was distinguished for intelli- 
gence, and for a gravity beyond his years. In 1569, he was 
entered at Christchurch, Oxford, and is reported to have held a 
public disputation with Carew, the author of the Survey of Corn- 
wall ; while at college he displayed a remarkable acuteness of 
intellect and craving for knowledge. 

In 1572, Philip Sidney left England, and proceeded on his 

* Founded by King Edward VI. In our own time, this school has maintained its 
pre-eminent rank, under the able head-mastership of the Kev. Dr. Butler. The School- 
house is situated near the Castle of Shrewsbury, and is built of freestone, in the Italianized 
'ludor style ; it occupies two sides of a quadi-angle, with a square pinnacled tower at the 
angle, which was partly rebuilt in 183i. 



Anecdote Biographies. ^ 159 

travels into France. He was furnished with a license to pass 
into foreign lands, with three servants and four horses ; and 
was placed under the protection of the Earl of Lincoln, the Lord 
Admiral. 

Sidney was at this time in his eighteenth year, and his boyhood already gave promise of 
all those graces of mind and of person for which his riper years were so famous. He was 
tall and well shaped ; and even at his early age, skillful in all manly exercices llis hair 
and complexion were very fair, and his countenance soft and pensive as a woman's, and 
yet full both of intelligence and thoughtfulness Indeed, if the gift of nature descend by 
inheritance, we cannot wonder that there should be in him a rare union of fine qualities : 
for his father, Sir Henry, Lord- President of Wales, and afterward Deputy- of Ireland, was 
the very type of a noble English gentleman, excellent as a soldier and a statesman — that 
is, upright and prudent, brave and loyal. His mother, the Lady Mary, was full worthy to 
be the wife of such a man. She was one of those women who are the richest ornaments 
of English History ; one whose noble nature had been trained by the discipline of sorrow 
to the highest degree of excellence. She was the daughter of John, Duke of Northum- 
berland ; and when her eldest son, Philip, was born, she wore mourning for her father, 
her brother, and her sister-in-law, the Lady Jane, who had all died on the scaffold. " The 
clearness of his father's judgment," writes Fulke Greville, " and the ingenious sensibleness 
of his mother's, brought forth so happy a temper in their eldest son. From the father he 
had the stout heart, and the strong hand, and keen intelligence, while his mother has set 
on him the stamp of her own sweet and very gentle nature." — Life of Sidney ^ by Sieuart A. 
Pears, 31. A. 

Paris was Sidney's first halting-place, and here he was intro- 
duced to the dazzling and bewildering splendor of the court of 
Catharine de Medicis. " Sidney," says Mr. Pears, " had heard 
much of this queen and her brilliant court: in the quiet days 
which he had passed at Penshurst, Ludlow, and Oxford, he had 
often dreamed of such scenes ; often too he had talked over the 
wild doings of the civil wars of France ; had his favorite heroes, 
and in his fancy formed pictures of them — and here he stood 
in the very midst of these men." But while in the full enjoy- 
ment of the pleasure and luxury of Paris, Sidney's mind was 
horrified by the Massacre of St. Bartholomew — of near 5000 
persons — and he fled for shelter to the English embassy: the 
effect of this tragedy on him was duep, and never effaced. 
From France he proceeded to Belgium, Germany, Hungary, and 
Italy. At Frankfort, he first became acquainted with Herbert 
Languet, and addressed to him a volume of letters in Latin^ 
which Mr. Pears has translated, with a few of Sidney's replies. 
He observes : 

Sidney's letters are not remarkable for the elegance of their style, for he was then only 
practicing his pen in Latin writing ; nor is it the wit and humor of his letters that render 
them worthy of attention and praise ; but there is such a spirit of gentleness through 
them all, so much manliness of thought, expressed with the greatest modesty and simpli- 
city, that they cannot fail to please those who delight in watching the opening of a fine 
character. And if they do not possess that profu.sion of wit which loads the pages of some 
modern letter-writers, who (to use the words of Sidney himself) ''cast sugar and spice up- 
on every dish that is served at table," they have a charm which no mere man of fashion, 
be he never so brilliant and versed in belles-lettres, can attahi or even appreciate. They 
are full of the quiet play of a heart overflowing with afifection. Hence the ofiFensive crit- 
icism of Horace Walpole on Sidney's writings. 

Sidney next arrived at Vienna, where he perfected himself 



160 



School-Days of Eminent Men. ^HB 



in horsemanship and other exercises peculiar to those times. 
At Venice he became acquainted with Edmund Wotton, brother 
to Sir Henry Wotton. He is said also to have enjoyed the 
friendship of Tasso, but this statement cannot be verified. Sid- 
ney returned to England in 1573; and, famed aforehand by a 
noble report of his accomplishments, which, together with the 
state of his person, framed by a natural propension to arms, he 
soon attracted the good opinion of all men, and was so highly 
prized in the good opinion of the queen (Elizabeth), that she 
" thought the court deficient without him." Connected with this 
success is Sidney's first literary attempt, a masque entitled The 
Lady of May, which was performed before Queen Elizabeth, at 
Wanstead House, in Essex. 

After Sidney's quarrel at tennis with the Earl of Oxford, he 
retired from court to Wilton, the seat of his brother-in-law, the 
Earl of Pembroke : and there, in the companionship of his sis- 
ter Mary, he wrote, for her amusement, the Arcadia^ which, 
probably, received some additions from her pen. 

The chivalry of Sir Philip Sidney, his learning, generous pat- 
ronage of talent, and his untimely fate (he fell at Zutphen, in 
his thirty-third year), make his character of great interest. " He 
was a gentleman finished and complete, in whom mildness was 
associated with courage, erudition mollified by refinement, and 
courtliness dignified by truth. He is a specimen of what the 
English character was capable of producing when foreign ad- 
mixtures had not destroyed its simplicity, or politeness debased 
its honor. Such was Sidney, of whom every Englishman has 
reason to be proud. He was the best prose-writer of his time. 
Sir Walter Raleigh calls him " the English Petrarch," and Cow- 
per speaks of him as " a warbler of poetic prose." He trod, 
from his cradle to the grave, amidst incense and flowers, and 
died in a dream of glory. 

BOYHOOD OF LORD BACON. 

Of the early years of Sir Nicholas Bacon, father of Sir 
Francis Bacon, the biography is uncertain ; but he received his 
scholastic education at Benet (Corpus Christi) College, Cam- 
bridge, and completed his studies abroad. Of his illustrious son, 
Francis Bacon, born in the Strand, in 1561, we have some in- 
teresting early traits. His health was delicate ; and by his 
gravity of carriage, and love of sedentary pursuits, he was dis- 
tinguished from other boys. While a mere child, he stole away 
from his play-fellows to a vault in St. James's Fields, to investi- 
gate the cause of a singular echo which he had observed there ; 
and when only twelve, he busied himself with speculations on 



Anecdote Biographies, 161 

the art of legerdemain.* At thirteen he was entered at Trinity 
College, Cambridge, which he left after a residence of three 
years, " carrying with him a profound contempt for the course 
of study pursued there, a fixed conviction that the system of 
academic education in England was radically vicious, a just 
scorn for the trifles on which the followers of Aristotle had 
wasted their powers, and no great reverence for Aristotle him- 
self" (Macaulay.') Such was the foundation of Bacon's phi- 
losophy ; the influence of his writings has been glanced at in 
page 116. 

THE ADMIRABLE CRICHTOX. 

The combined genius, learning, and physical advantages which 
obtained for this celebrated Scotchman the title of Admirable, 
however oft-told, must be briefly related in this work. James 
Crichton, son of Robert Crichton, of Eliock, who was Lord 
Advocate to King James YL, was born in Scotland, in the year, 
1561. The precise place of his birth is not mentioned; but, 
having acquired the rudiments of education at Edinburgh, he was 
sent to study philosophy and the sciences at St. Andrew's, then 
the most renowned seminary in Scotland, where the illustrious 
Buchanan was one of his masters. At the ealy age of fourteen 
he took his degree of Master of Arts, and was regarded as a 
prodigy, not only in abilities but actual attainments. He was 
considered the third reader in the college, and in a short time 
became complete master of the philosophy and languages of the 
time, as well as of ten different languages. 

It was then the custom for Scotchmen of birth to finish their 
education abroad, and serve in some foreign army previously to 
their entering that of their own country. "When he was only 
sixteen or seventeen years old (the date cannot be fixed), 
Crichton's father sent him to the Continent. He had scarcely 
arrived in Paris, when he publicly challenged all scholars and 
philosophers to a disputation at the College of Navarre, to be 
carried on in any of the twelve specified languages, "in any 
science, liberal art, discipline, or faculty, whether practical or 
theoretic; and, as if to show in how little need he stood of prep- 
aration, or how lightly he held his adversaries, he spent the six 
weeks that elapsed between the challenge and the contest in a 
continued round of tilting, hunting, and dancing." On the 

* Queen Elizabeth, who was taken with the smartness of Bacon's answers when he was 
a boy, used to try him with questions on various subjects ; and it is said that once when 
she asked him how old he was, his reply was ingeniously complimentary : '* I am just 
two years younger than your Majesty's happy reign." Elizabeth expressed her approba- 
tion by calling the boy her " Young Lord Keeper." 

11 



162 School-Bays of Eminent 3fen, 

appointed day, however, he encountered "the gravest philos- 
ophers and divines," -when he acquitted himself to the aston- 
ishment of all who heard him, and received the public praises 
of the president, and four of the most eminent professors. 
Next day, he was equally victorious at a tilting match at the 
Louver, where, through the enthusiasm of the ladies of the 
court, and from the versatility of his talents, his youth, the 
gracefulness of his manners, and the beauty of his person, he was 
named V Admirable. 

After two years' service in the army of Henry III., Crichton 
repaired to Italy, and at Rome repeated in the presence of the 
pope and cardinals the literary challenge and triumph that had 
gained him so much honor in Paris. From Rome he went to 
Venice, and in the university of the neighboring city of Padua, 
reaped fresh honors by Latin poetry, scholastic disputation, an 
exposition of the errors of Aristotle and his commentators, and 
(as a playful wind-up of the day's labor) a declamation upon the 
happiness of ignorance. He next, in consequence of the doubts 
of some incredulous persons, and the reports that he was a 
literary impostor, gave a public challenge: the contest, which 
included the Aristotelian and Platonic philosophies, and the 
mathematics of the time, was prolonged during three days, before 
an innumerable concourse of people; when Aldus Manutius, the 
celebrated Venetian printer, who was present at this "mirac- 
ulous encounter," states Crichton to have proven completely 
victorious. 

Crichton now pursued his travels to the court of Mantua, but 
to a combat more tragical than those carried on by the tongue 
or by the pen. Here he met a certain Italian gentleman "of a 
mighty able, nimble, and vigorous body, but by nature fierce, 
cruel, warlike, and audacious, and superlatively expert and 
dexterous in the use of his weapon." He had already killed three 
of the best swordsmen of Mantua; but Crichton, who had studied 
the sword from his youth, and who had probably improved him- 
self in the use of the rapier in Italy, challenged the bravo: they 
fought; the young Scotchman was victorious, and the Italian left 
dead on the spot. At the court of Mantua, too, Crichton wrote 
Italian comedies, and played the principal parts in them himself, 
with great success. But he was shortly after assassinated by 
Vincenzo Gonzaga, son of the Duke of Mantua, it is supposed 
through jealousy. Thus was Crichton cut off in his twenty- 
second year, without leaving any proof of his genius except a 
few Latin verses, printed by Aldus Manutius; and the testi- 
monials of undoubted and extreme admiration of several 



Anecdote Biographies. 163 

distinguished Itlalian authors who were his cotemporaries and 
associates. 

HOW GEORGE ABBOT, THE CLOTHWEAVER's SON, BECAME 
ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY. 

In 1562, there was born unto a poor cloth worker, at Guild- 
ford, in Surrey, a son, under these remarkable circumstances. 
His mother, shortly before his birth, dreamt that if she could 
eat a jack or a pike, the child would become a great man. She 
accordingly sought for the fish; and accidentally, taking up 
some of the river water (that runs close by the house) in a 
pail, she also took up the jack, dressed it, and devoured it 
almost aU. This odd affair induced several persons of quality to 
offer themselves to be sponsors when the child was christened ; 
and this the poverty of the parents induced them joyfully to 
accept. Such was the tradition of the place, which Aubrey, in 
1692, heard on the testimony of the minister, and other trust- 
worthy inhabitants. 

In spite of the dream, however, George Abbot would, in all 
probability, have been a clothworker, like his father, had there 
not been in those days many admirable institutions for the educa- 
tion of the humbler classes. He was sent to the Free Grammar 
School, founded by a grocer of London in 1553, for thirty "of 
the poorest men's sons" of Guildford, to be taught to read and 
write English, and cast accounts perfectly, so that they should 
be fitted for apprentices, etc. In 1578 he was removed to Balliol 
College, Oxford, and in 1597 was elected Master of University 
College. He was also three times elected Vice-Chancellor of the 
University, so that his reputation and influence at Oxford must 
have been considerable. His erudition was great: in 1604 he 
was one of the persons appointed for the new translation of the 
Bible; and he was one of eight to whom the whole of the New 
Testament, except the Epistles, was intrusted. In 1609, he was 
made Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry ; next year, translated 
to the See of London ; and in little more than a month, he was 
elevated to the Archbishopric of Canterbury. Two other sons 
of the poor clothworker were almost equally fortunate in 
advancement. The Archbishop's elder brother and school-fellow, 
Robert, became Bishop of Salisbury; and his youngest brother, 
Maurice, was an eminent London merchant, one of the first 
Directors of the East India Company, Lord Mayor, and repre- 
sentative of the City in Parliament. Archbishop Abbot attended 
King James in his last illness, and he crowned Charles I. " He 
founded a fair Hospital, well built, and liberally endowed," at 
Guildford, for 20 brethren and sisters. He was also a munificent 



164 School-Days of Eminent Men, 

benefactor to the poor of Guilford, Croydon, and Lambeth* 
The humble cottage tenement in which he was born exists to 
this day: in 1692 it was a public-house, with the sign of the 
Three Mariners. 

SHAKSPEARE AT STRATFORD-ON-AVON. 

We have already spoken of King Edward's Free Grammar 
School, at Birmingham; and, in the same county of Warwick, 
at Stratford-upon-Avon, is a free grammar-school, founded by a 
native of the town, in the reign of Henry VL, and celebrated as 
the School of Shakspeare. Immediately over the Guild Hall is 
the school-room, now divided into two chambers, and having a 
low flat plaster ceiling in place of the arched roof. Mr. Knight 
thus argues for the identity of the room; 

" The only qualifications necessary for the admission of a boy into the Free Grammar 
School of Stratford were, that he should be a resident in the town, of seven years of age, 
and able to read. The Grammar School was essentially connected with the Corporation of 
Stratford ; and it is impossible to imagine that, when the son of John Shakspeare became 
qualified for admission to a school where the best education of the time was given, literally 
for nothing, his father in that year being chief alderman, should not have sent him to 
the school." 

Thither, it is held, Shakspeare, born at Stratford in 1564, 
went about the year 1571. Mr. Knight impressively continues: 

"Assuredly the worthy curate of the neighboring village of Luddington, Thomas Hunt, 
who was also the schoolmaster, would have received his new scholar with some kindness. 
As his ' shining morning face ' first passed out of the main street into that old court 
through which the upper room of learning was to be reached, a new life would be opening 
upon him. The humble minister of religion who was his first instructor, has left no me- 
morials of his talents or acquirements ; and in a few years another master came after him, 
Thomas Jenkins, also unknown to fame. All praise and honor be to them ; for it is impos- 
sible to imagine that the teachers of William Shakspeare were evil instructors, giving the 
boy husks instead of wholesome aliment." 

At Stratford, then, at the free Grammar School of his own 
town, Mr. Knight assumes Shakspeare to have received in every 
just sense of the word the education of a scholar. This, it is 
true, is described by Ben Jonson as "small Latin and less 
Greek ;" Fuller states that " his learning was very little ;" and 
Aubrey, that "he understood Latin pretty well." But the 
question is set at rest by "the indisputable fact that the very 
earliest writings of Shakspeare are imbued with a spirit of 
classical antiquity; and that the all-wise nature of the learning 
that manifests itself in them, whilst it offers the best proof of 
his familiarity with the ancient writers, is a circumstance which 
has misled those who never attempted to dispute the existence 
of the learning which was displayed in the direct pedantry of his 
cotemporaries." So that, because Shakspeare uses his knowl- 
edge skillfully, he is assumed not to have read ! 



Anecdote Biographies, 165 

To assume that William Shakspeare did not stay long enough 
at the grammar-school of Stratford to obtain a very fair pro- 
ficiency in Latin, with some knowledge of Greek, is to assume 
an absurdity upon the face of circumstances. 

Of Shakspeare's life, immediately after his quitting Stratford, 
little is positively known. Collier concurs with Malone "in 
thinking, that after Shakspeare quitted the Free School, he was 
employed in the office of an attorney. Proofs of something like 
a legal education are to be found in many of his plays, and it 
may safely be asserted that they (law phrases) do not occur any- 
thing like so frequently in the dramatic productions of any of his 
cotemporaries."* 

" In these days, the education of the universities commenced much earlier than at pres- 
ent. Boys intended for the learned professions, and more especially for the church, com- 
monly went to Oxford and Cambridge at eleven or twelve years of age. If they were not 
intended for those professions, they probably remained at the Grammar School till they 
were thirteen or fourteen ; and then they were fitted for being apprenticed to tradesmen, 
or articled to attorneys, a numerous and thriving body in those days of cheap litigation. 
Many also went early to the Inns of Court, which were the universities of the law, and 
where there was real study and discipline in direct connexion with the several societies." — 
Knight\' Life of Shakspeare. 

LORD HERBERT OF CHERBURY, IN SHROPSHIRE. 

The celebrated Lord Herbert of Cherbury, born 1581, in his 
Autobiography, thus describes his early tuition: 

" My Schoolmaster in the house of my lady grandmother (at Ey ton, in Shropshire), 
began at the age of seven years to teach me the Alphabet, and afterwards Grammar, and 
other books commonly read in schools, in which I profited so much, that upon this theme 
Auclaces fortuna juvat, I made an oration of a sheet of paper and 50 or 60 verses ia the 
space of one day." . . . 

He adds that under Mr. Newton, at Didlebury, in Shropshire, 
he attained to the knowledge of the Greek Tongue and Logic, 
in so much that at twelve years old his parents sent him to Oxford 
to University College, where he disputed at his first coming in 
Logic, and made in Greek the exercises required in that Col- 
lege, oftener than in Latin. He was a patron of Ben Jonson, 
who, in a complimentary epigram, addresses him as "all-virtuous 
Herbert." His Life of Henry VIII. is a masterpiece of 

♦The name "William Shakspere" occurs in a certificate of the names and arms of 
trained soldiers — trained militia, we should now call them — in the hundred of Barlichway, 
in the county of Warwick — under the hand of Sir Fulk Greville ("Friend to Sir Philip 
Sydney"), Sir Edward Greville, and Thomas Spencer. Was our William Shakspere a 
soldier? Why not? Jonson was a soldier, and had slain his man. Donne had served in 
the Low Countries. Why not Shakspere in arms ? At all events, here is a field for inquiry 
and speculation. The date is September 23, 1605, the year of the Gunpowder Plot; and 
the lists were possibly prepared through instructions issued by Cecil in consequence of 
secret information as to the working of the plot in Warwickshire — the pn posed head- 
quarters of the insurrection — State Papers., edited by Mary Anne Everett Green. 



166 School-Bays of Eminent Men, 

historic biography, worthy to rank with Bacon's Life of Henry 
VII* 

ADMIRAL BLAKE AT BKIDGWATER. 

Robert Blake, "Admiral and General at Sea," was born in 
1598, at Bridgwater, in a house of the Tudor age, which remains 
to this day; adjoining is the secluded garden, in which "the 
ruddy-faced and curly-haired boy, Robert Blake, played and pon- 
dered, as was his habit, until the age of sixteen." He was sent 
early to the Bridgwater Grammar School, which had been 
founded some five-and-forty years before, and endowed by 
Queen Elizabeth; and was then considered one of the best 
foundations of its kind in England. "At the Grammar School 
he made some progress in his Greek and Latin ; something of 
navigation, ship-building, and the routine of sea duties he prob- 
ably learned from his father, or from his father's factors and 
servants. His own taste, however, the habit of his mind, and 
the bent of his ambition, led to literature. He was the first of 
his race who had shown any vocation to letters and learning, 
and his father, proud of his talents and his studies, resolved that 
he should have some chance of rising to eminence. Nor was 
this early culture thrown away. At sixteen he was already 
prepared for the university, and at his earnest desire was sent to 
Oxford, where he matriculated as a member of St. Alban's Hall, 
in 1615." He removed to Wadham College, and there remained 
several years, took the usual honors, and completed his educa- 
tion ; and in the great dining-hall of Wadham a portrait of the 
Admiral is shown with pride as that of its most illustrious scholar. 
Blake, in good time, took his degree of Master of Arts at Oxford ; 
he had read the best authors in Greek and Latin, and wrote the 
latter language sufficiently well for verse and epigram. Even 
in the busiest days of his public life, it was his pride not to for- 
get his old studies.! 

waller's dullness. 

Edmund Waller, the poet, one of the best examples of poetic 
style and diction, was born at Coleshill, in Berkshire, in 1G05, 
and was sent early to the Grammar School of Market Wickham, 
where he was said to be "dull and slow in his task." Mr. 

* Lord Herbert was thp. elder brother of George Herbert, vrho studied foreign languages 
in hopes of rising to be Secretary of State, but being disappointed in his views at court, be 
ti ok orders, became Prebend of Lincoln, and became Rector of Bemerton, near Salisbury. 
Ilis poems were printed in 1635, under fhe title of the Temple; of which 20,000 copies 
were sold in a few years. His best prose work is Tlie Country Parson. Lord Bacou dedi- 
cated to him his Translation of some Psalms into English verse. 

t See Hepworth Dixon's Life of Blake. 



Anecdote Biographies. 167 

Thomas Bigge, of Wickham, who had been Waller's school- 
fellow, and of the same form, told Aubrey, that "belittle thought 
that Waller would have made so rare a poet; for he was wont 
to make his exercise for him." He was removed at an un- 
usually early age to King's College, Cambridge, where his scho- 
lastic attainments are said to have led to his being elected mem- 
ber of parliament for the borough of Agmondeshara at the age 
of IG; though this is, with greater probability, attributed to 
Waller's name and local influence. 

This account of Waller's dullness at school is probable; for 
says Mr. Bell, "it clearly indicates the character of Waller's 
genius, which demanded time and labor in the accomplishment 
of the smallest results." 

Aubrey describes Waller's writing as "a lamentable hand, 
as bad as the scratching of a hen ;" but this is an exaggeration, 
and disproved by his autograph, which is, however, very rare. 

AValler took his seat in the House of Commons before he was 
the age of 17. He became (as Bishop Burnet expresses it) 
"the delight of the House," and, when old, "said the liveliest 
things of any among them." Being present once, when the 
Duke of Buckingham was paying his court to the King, by 
arguing against Revelation, Mr. Waller said ; " My Lord, I am 
a great deal older than your Grace ; and have, I believe, heard 
more arguments for atheism than ever your Grace did ; but I 
have lived long enough to see there is nothing in them ; and so, 
1 hope your Grace will." Waller died in 1687, in his 83rd year. 

DR. BUSBY, HEAD MASTER OP WESTMINSTER SCHOOL. 

This most eminent schoolmaster of his time, who is said in the 
Census Alumnorum, "to have educated the greatest number of 
learned scholars that ever adorned at one time any age or nation," 
was born at Luton, in Northamptonshire, in 1606. Having 
passed through Westminster School, he was elected student of 
Christ Church, Oxford ; but he was so poor that he received the 
sum of oZ. of the parish of St. Margaret, to enable him to pro- 
ceed bachelor; and 26/. 135. 4cZ. to proceed master of arts; as 
entered in the Churchwarden's accounts. Of this timely aid he 
made a noble acknowledgment by making a beciuest of 50/. to 
poor housekeepers, an estate worth 525/., and in personal prop- 
erty nearly 5000/., to St. Margaret's parish. 

Busby achieved a great reputation at Oxford, as an " exact 
Latinist and Grecian," and likewise for his power of oratory. 
While still a resident in the university, he acted the part of 
Cratander, in Cartwright's Royal Slave, before the King and 
Queen at Christchurch, when being more applauded than his 



168 School-Bays of Eminent Men. 

fellow-students, his success excited in him so violent a passion 
for the stage, that he had well nigh engaged himself as an 
actor. 

In 1640 he was appointed master of Westminster School. 
During the civil War, though he was ejected from his church 
appointments, but was allowed to retain his studentship of Christ- 
church, and the chief mastership of the school, — a tribute to his 
pre-eminent qualities as an instructor. He labored in his mas- 
tership during more than half a century ; and by his diligence, 
learning, and assiduity, has become the proverbial representative 
of his class. 

Dr. Busby is said to have been not only witty, learned, and 
highly accomplished, but also modest and unassuming : his 
piety was unaffected, and his liberality unbounded. lie died in 
lG9o, and was interred in Westminster Abbey. His works 
were principally for the use of his school, and either consist of 
expurgated editions of certain classics which he wished his boys 
to read in a harmless form ; or grammatical treatises, mostly 
metrical. There is a tradition that some of these were the com- 
positions of his scholars, superintended and corrected by himself. 
Several of his publications, more or less altered, were used in 
Westminster School until a few years since. 

The severity of Busby's discipline is traditional,* but we do 
not find that it was so ; and strange as it may appear, no records 
are preserved of him in the school over which he so long pre- 
sided. The charitable intentions of his will are carried into 
effect by old Westminsters, who meet in the Jerusalem Chamber. 
The picture, by Riley, of Dr. Busby with one of his scholars, 
said to be Philip Henry, is in the Hall at Christchurch ; there 
are also other portraits of him, and a bust of him by Rysbrack ; 
all from a cast in plaster taken after death, for during his life he 
never would sit for his portrait. Bagshaw states that he never 
spoilt the rod by sparing the child: according to Dr. Johnson, 
he used to call the rod his " sieve," and to say "whoever did not 
pass through it was no boy for him." Pope thus commemorates 
one of the class: 

" Lo ! a specter rose, whose index-hand 
Held forth the virtues of the dreadful wand : 
His beaver'd brow a birchin garland wears, 
Drooping with infants' blood and mothers' tears. 
O'er every vein a shudd'ring horror runs, — 
Eton and Wiuton shake throu<;h all their sons. 



* Doubtless transmitted by the following passage from Sir Roger de Coverley's visit to 
Westminster Abbey, in the Spectator: 

" As wo stood before Busby's tomb, the knight uttered himself — ' Dr. Busby — a great 
man ! he whipped my grandfather — a very great man I I should have gone to him my- 
self if I had not been a blockhead — a very great man !' " 



Anecdote Biographies, 1G9 

All flesh is humbled ; Westminster's hold race 

Shriek and confess the genius of the place ; 

The pale poy senator jet tingling stand-*, 

And holds his garments close with quiv'ring hands." 

Nevertheless, Busby was much beloved by his scholars, as may 
be seen by letters from Cowley, Dryden, and others. He is 
said to have taken especial pains in preparing his scholars for 
the reception of the Eucharist. 

Wood describes him as " eminent and exemplary for piety and 
justice, an encourager of virtuous and forward youth, of great 
learning and hospitality, and the chief person that educated more 
youths that were afterward eminent in the Church and State 
than any master of his time." 

LORD CLARENDON. 

Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, one of the illustrious men 
whose talents were called into action by the Civil Wars, was 
born in 1608, at Dinton, near Salisbury, where his father en- 
joyed a competent fortune. He was first instructed at home by 
the clergyman of the parish, who was also a schoolmaster; but 
his principal improvement arose from the care and conversation 
of his father, who had traveled much in his youth. Edward, 
being a younger son, was destined for the church : and with this 
view was sent to Magdalen College, Oxford, in his fourteenth 
year. But on the death of his eldest brother, which soon after 
took place, his destination was altered ; and he was now design- 
ed for the profession of the law. He quitted the University 
with the reputation rather of talents than of industry ; and from 
some dangerous habits in which he had been initiated, he after- 
ward looked on this early removal as not the least fortunate inci- 
dent of his life. 

He commenced his professional studies in the Middle Temple, 
under the direction of his uncle, Sir Nicholas Hyde, then trea- 
surer of that Society. His early legal studies were impeded by 
his ill health. Nor was his application considerable after his 
recovery ; he lost another year amidst the pleasures of dissipa- 
tion ; and when his dangerous companions had disappeared, he 
still felt little inclination to immure himself amidst the records 
of the law. He was fond of polite literature, and particularly 
attached to the Latin classics ; he therefore bestowed only so 
much attention on his less agreeable professional studies as was 
sufficient to save his credit with his uncle. 

Nevertheless, Hyde, on his appearance at the bar, greatly 
surpassed the expectations of his cotemporaries : he had been 
punctual in the performance of all those public exercises to 
which he was bound by the rules of his profession. Meanwhile, 



170 School-Bays of Eminent Men. 

he had been careful to form high connections; for he had laid it 
down as a rule to be always found in the best company; and to 
attain by every honorable means, an intimate friendship with 
the most considerable persons in the kingdom. While only a 
student-at-law, he enjoyed the society of Ben Jonson, the most 
celebrated wit of that age ; of Selden, the most skillful of all 
English lawyers in the ancient constitution and history of his 
country ; and of May, a distinguished scholar, and afterward the 
historian of the parliament. Among his other friends, he could 
recount some of the most learned and celebrated divines — Shel- 
don, Morley, Earles, Hales of Eton, and above all Chilling- 
worth, whose amiable qualities rendered him as beloved by his 
friends, as his controversial talents caused him to be feared by 
his antagonists: Edmund Waller, who was not less admired by 
his cotemporaries as an orator, than by posterity as a poet, was 
among Clarendon's intimate associates; but the friend whom he 
regarded with the most tender attachment, and the most unqual- 
ified admiration, was Sir Lucius Carey, afterward Lord Falk- 
land, whom he delights to describe as the most accomplished 
gentleman, scholar, and statesman of his age.* From the con- 
versation of these and other distinguished individuals (the char- 
acters of some of whom he has admirably sketched in his works), 
Clarendon considered himself to have derived a great portion of 
his knowledge; and he declares that "he never was so proud, 
or thought himself so good a man, as when he was the worst 
man in the company." 

SIR MATTHEW HALE's EARLY LIFE. 

Sir Matthew Hale, the illustrious lawyer, born in 1609, lost 
both his parents when he was but an infant: he was educated 
under a clergyman of Puritanical principles, and at the age of 17 
was sent to Magdalen Hall, Oxford, where he soon got rid of 
his Puritanical notions, and plunged into the extreme dissipa- 
tion of the college life of that period. He w^as on the point of 

* Clarendon says: lie (Falkland) was wonderfully beloved by all who knew him, as a 
man of excellent parts, of a wit so sharp, and a nature so sincere, that nothing could be 
more lovely. 

His h"use (at Tew), being within little more than ten miles of Oxford, he contracted- 
familiarity and friendship with the most polite and accurate men at that university ; who ■ 
found such an immenseness of wit, and such a solidity cf judgment in him, so infinite a 
fancy, bound in by a most logical ratiocination ; such a vast knowledge, that he was not 
ignorant in anything ; yet such an excessive humility, as if he had known nothing, that 
the)' frequently resorted and dwelt with him, as in a college situated in a purer air ; so 
that his house was a university in a less volume, whither they came not so much for re- 
pose as study, and to examine and refine those grosser propositions, which laziness and 
consent made current in vulgar conversation. 

He was superior to all those passions and affections which attend vulgar minds, and was 
guilty of no other ambition than of knowledge ; and to be reputed a lover of all good men. 
^ A statue of this truly great man is appropriately placed iu St. Stephen's Hall, in the 
New Palace at AVestminster. 



1 



Anecdote Biographies. 171 

becoming a soldier in the army of the Prince of Orange, then 
ensao-ed in the Low Countries, when accident introduced him 
to Serjeant Ghinville, who, perceiving the valuable qualities 
which the young man possessed, persuaded him to apply himself 
exclusively to the law. Acting upon this advice, Hale was ad- 
mitted a student of Lincoln's Inn, and commenced a course of 
study, extending to sixteen hours every day. One of his com- 
panions in a debauch having been taken suddenly and danger- 
ously ill. Hale was so struck with remorse, that he gave up his 
intemperate habits. He rose to be Chief Justice of the King's 
Bench, and left a History of the Common Law ; and a collec- 
tion of valuable MSS., which he bequeathed to the library of 
Lincoln's Lin. His " Plan of Listruction" has been detailed 
at p. 109. 

SAMUEL BUTLER AT WORCESTER. 

Samuel Butler, the most witty and learned poetical satirist, 
was born at Strensham, in Worcestershire, in 1612, and received 
his first rudiments of learning at home : he was afterward sent 
to the College School at Worcester, then presided over by Mr. 
Henry Bright, prebendary of that Cathedral, whom Dr. Nash 
describes as a " celebrated scholar, and many years master of the 
King's school there ; one who made his business his delight ; 
and, though in very easy circumstances, continued to teach for 
the sake of doing good, by benefiting the families of the neigh- 
boring gentlemen, who thought themselves happy in having 
their sons instructad by him." Butler's father's finances would 
not allow him to be matriculated at Cambridge, to which uni- 
versity he desired — and his proficiency in learning entitled him 
— to proceed. Accordingly he engaged as clerk to an eminent 
justice of the peace, and in his leisure hours studied history, 
poetry, music, and painting; and obtaining access to the Coun- 
tess of Kent's well-stocked library, he enjoyed the conversation 
of the learned Selden. He entered afterward into the service 
of Sir Samuel Locke, a knight of ancient family in Bedford- 
shire, who had been one of Cromwell's commanders, and is sup- 
posed to have been the prototype of the character oi' Hudibras* 

* Life of Butler prefixed to Hudibra$. Bright is buried in Worcester cathedral, where, 
in the Bishop's Chapel, is a Latin epitaph on him, written by Dr. Joseph Hall, Dean of 
Worcester. Dr. Nash adds : — " I have endeavored to revive the memory of this great and 
good teacher, wishing to excite a laudable emulation in our provincial schoolmasters ; a 
race of men who, if they execute their trust with ability, iudustr3', and in a proper man- 
ner, deserve tlie highest honor and patronage their country can bestow, as they have an 
opportunity of communicating learning at a moderate expense to the middle rank of gen- 
try, without the danger of ruining their fortunes, and corrupting their morals or their 
health." 



172 School-Bays of Eminent Men, 



JEREMY TAYLOR AT CAMBRIDGE. 



n 



Jeremy Taylor, the most eloquent and imaginative of English 
divines, and the Shakspeare and Spenser of our theological 
literature, was born in 1613, and descended from gentle and 
even heroic blood. His family had, however, " fallen into the 
portion of weeds and outworn faces," and Jeremy's father was a 
barber in Cambridge. He, nevertheless, put his son to college, 
as a sizar, in his thirteenth year, having himself previously 
taught him the rudiments of grammar and mathematics, and 
given him the advantages of the Free Grammar School. In 
1631, Jeremy Taylor took his degree of B.A. in Caius College, 
and entering into sacred orders, removed to London, where his 
eloquent lectures in St. Paul's Cathedral, aided by " his florid 
and youthful beauty and pleasant air," procured him the patron- 
age of Archbishop Laud. Such was the commencement of the 
rise of Jeremy Taylor, whose fortunes suffered " in the great 
storm which dashed the vessel of the church all in pieces," and 
from his being in advance of the age in which he lived, and of 
the ecclesiastical system in which he had been reared. 

COWLEY AT WESTMINSTER. 

Abraham Cowley, whom Milton declared to be one of the 
three greatest English poets, was born in Fleet-street, in 1618.* 
He was sent early to Westminster School : he tells us that he 
had such a defect in his memory, as never to "bring it to retain 
the ordinary rules of grammar." Bishop Spratt says: 

" Ilowever, he supply'd that want by conversing with the books themselyes from whence 
those rules had been drawn. That no doubt was a better way, though much more diflB- 
cult, and he afterward found this benefit by it, that having got the Gnek and Roman lan- 
guages as he had done his own, not by precept but use, he practiced them, not as a scholar 
but a native. 

" The first beginning of his studies was a familiarity with the most solid and unaffected 
Authors of Antiquity, which he fully digested, not only in his memory, but his judgment. 
By this advantage he learn'd nothing while a boy, that he needed to forget or forsake when 
he came to be a Man. His Mind was rightly season'd at first, and he had nothing to do, 
but still to proceed on the same Foundation on which he began." 

At "Westminster, Cowley "soon obtain'd and increas'd the 
noble genius peculiar to that place." He wrote his Pirarmis and 
Thishe when only ten years old, and his Constantia and Philetus 
when only twelve. They were published, with other pieces, as 
Poetical Blossomes, when he was only fifteen. At Westminster, 
too, he wrote his comedy of Love'^s Piddles; and his elegy upon 
the tragical fate of the two sons of Sir Thomas Lyttleton, drowned 
at Oxford, the elder in attempting to save the younger, in 1635. 
He had great respect for his master, Dr. Busby, to whom, in 

* Cowley's father was a law-writer, or engrosser, and not a grocer, as stated generally. 



'Anecdote Biographies. 173 

1G62, he presented a copy of his two Books of Plants, with a 
letter couched in the most affectionate and respectful terms. 
Dr. Johnson has pithily characterized Cowley as "a man whose 
learning and poetry were his lowest merits." Cowlev, in his 
Essay "Of Myself," says: 

•' When I was a very young boy at school,,instead of running about on holidays, and 
playing with my fellows, I was wont to steal from them, and walk into the fields, either 
alone with a book, or with some one companion, if I could find any of the same temper. 
I was then, too, so much an enemy to constraint, that my masters could never prevail on 
me. by any persuasions or encouragements, to learn without book the common rules of 
grammar, in which they dispensed with me alone, because they found I made a shift to do 
the usual exercise out of my own reading and observation. That I was then of the same 
mind as I am now (which, I confess, 1 wonder at myself), may appear at the latter end of 
an ode which I made when I was but thirteen years old, and which was then printed with 
many other verses. The beginning of it is boyish, but of part," adds Cowley, "if very 
little were corrected, I should hardly now be much ashamed. You may see by it I was 
even then acquainted with the poets (for the conclusion is taken out of Horace) ; and per- 
haps it was the immature and immoderate love of them which stamped first, or rather 

engraved, the characters in me." "I believe I can tell the particular little 

chance that filled my head first with such chimes of verse, as have never since left ringing 
there ; for I remember when I began to read, and take some pleasure in it, there was wont 
to lie in my mother's parlor (I know not by what accident, for she never in her life read 
any book but of devotion); but there was wont to be Spenser's works ; this I happened to 
fall upon, and was infinitely delighted wi^h the stories of the knights, and giants, and 
monsters, end brave houses, which I found everywhere there (though my understanding 
had little to do with all this) ; and by degrees with the tinkling of the rhyme, and dance 
of the numbers ; so that I think I had read him all over before I was twelve years old. 
With these affections of mind, and my heart wholly set upon letters, I went to the univer- 
sity ; but was soon torn from thence by that public violent storm, which would suffer 
nothing to stand where it did, but rooted up every plant, even from the princely 
cedar, to me, the hyssop." 

At college he was known by the elegance of his exercises, and 
composed the greater part of his epic, Davideis. Before he was 
20 years old, he laid the design of this his most masculine work, 
that he finished long after. 

JOHN EVELYN AT ETON AND OXFORD. 

John Evelyn, the perfect model of an English gentleman of 
the seventeenth century, and known as " Sylva Evelyn," from 
his work with that title, on Forest Trees, was born in 1620, at 
Wotton House, in the most picturesque district of Surrey. He 
states in his Diary, that he " was not initiated into any rudiments 
till he was four years old, and then one Frier taught him at the 
church porch." When he was eight years old, at which time he 
resided with his maternal grandmother, he began to learn Latin 
at Lewes, and was afterward sent to the Free School at South- 
over, adjoining Lewes. His father, who would willingly have 
weaned him from the fondness of his grandmother, intended to 
place him at Eton, but the boy had been so terrified by the 
report of the severe discipline there, that he was sent back to 
Lewes. Poor Tusser's* account of Eton, which Evelyn 

♦Thomas Tusser, born about 15'J3, of ancient family, was the author of the first didactic 
poem in the language. He had a good education, and commenced life at Court, uuder the 



174 School-Days of Eminent Men. 

undoubtedly had in his mind, was quite sufficient to justify 
him: 

From Pauls I went, to Eton sent, 

To learn straightways the Latin phrase, 

Where fifty-three stripes given to mo 

At once I had ; 
For fault but small, or none at all, 
It came to pass, thus beat I was ; 
See Udall see, the m»rcy of thee 

To me, poor lad I 

No such inhumanity, we may be assured, would be perpetrated 
at Eton while Sir Henry Wotton was provost; and Evelyn, who 
says that he afterward a thousand times regretted his perverse- 
ness, lost much in not being placed under this admirable man. 
In 1636, he was admitted into the Middle Temple, though then 
absent and at school, whence, however, he finally removed in the 
following year, to Balliol College, Oxford. At school he had 
been very remiss in his studies till the last year, "so that I went 
to the university," he says, "rather out of shame of abiding 
longer at school, than from any fitness, as by sad experience I 
found, which put me to relearn all I had neglected, or but 
perfunctorily gained.'* While at Oxford, Evelyn was "admit- 
ted into the dancing and vaulting school," and began also to 
"look on the rudiments of music," in which, he says, "he after- 
ward arrived to some formal knowledge, though to small perfec- 
tion of hand, because he was so frequently diverted by inclina- 
tions to newer trifles." Having quitted the university, he went 
to London in 1640, to reside in the Middle Temple, his father 
having intended that he should adopt the profession of the law, 
which he denominates an "unpolished study;" but this idea he 
relinquished, on the death of his father. Storing his mind by 
travel and study, he entered on a long career of active, useful, 
and honorable employment. He was the great improver of 
English gardening; his love of planting, and the want of timber 
for the Navy, led him to write his "Sylva, a Discourse of 
Forest Trees,"* the first book printed by order of the Royal 
Society, of which Evelyn was one of the earliest Fellows ; it led 
to the planting of many millions of forest-trees, and is one of 
the very few books in the world which completely eflfected what 
it was designed to do. Another valuable work by Evelyn, is his 
Diary, or Kalendarium, a most interesting record of the eventful 
times in which the writer lived. 

patronage of Lord Paget. Afterward he practiced farming successively at Ratwood, in 
Sussex ; Ipswich ; Faii-sted, in Essex ; Norwich, and other places. He died in 1580 He ia 
principally known by his poem entitled Hundred God Hoints of Husbandries first pub- 
lished In 1557, and consisting of practical directions for farming, expressed in simple verse. 

♦The best illustration is to be seen to this day in the magnificent woods at Wotton 
Place. 



Anecdote Biograpldes, 175 

A short time before the publication of the Memoirs of John Evelyn, in 7817, Mr. Upcott, 
of the London Institution, was at Wotton, in Surrey, the residence of the Evelyn family ; 
and. sitting after supper with Lady Evelyn and 3Irs Molyneux, his attention was attracted 
to a tippet made of leathers, on which the latter was employed. '^ Ah, Mrs Molyneux, we 
have all of us our hobbies," said Mr. Upcott. "Very true, Mr Upcott," rejoined Lady 
Evelyn, "and may I take the liberty of a.«king what yours is?" " Why mine, madam, 
from a very early age, h.is been the collecting of the handwriting of men of eminence." 
"What! I suppose." Mrs Molyneux said, "you would care for things like these; un- 
folding one of her thread-cases, wliich was formed of a letter written by Sarah, Duchess 
of Marlborough " Indeed I should, very much " ''Oh, if that be your taste," said Lady 
Evelyn, " we can easily satisfy you This house is full of such matters ; there is a whole 
clothes-basket full of letters and other papers < f old Mr. Evelyn, in the garret, which I 
was so tired ef seeing, that I ordered the housemaid the other day to light the fires with 
them ;^but probably she may not yet have done it " The bell was rung, the ta-;ket ap- 
peared untouched, and the result was the publication of the Memoirs and Diary vf Johr\ 
Euelyn. 

marvell's scholarship. 

Andrew Marvell, prose-writer, poet, and patriot, was born in 
1620, at Kingston-upon-Hull, where his father was master of 
the Grammar Schooh At the age of 15, he was sent to Trinity 
College, Cambridge. Milton, writing to Bradshawe, in 1652, 
thus speaks of Marvell's attainments: "He (Marvell) hath 
spent four years abroad in Holland, France, Italy, and Spain, to 
very good purpose as I believe, and the gaining of those four 
languages ; besides, he is a scholar, and well read in the Latin 
and Greek authors, and no doubt of an approved conversation, 
for he comes now lately out of the house of the Lord Fairfax, 
who was general, where he was intrusted to give some instruc- 
tions in the languages to the lady his daughter." 

JOHN AUBREY, IN WILTSHIRE. 

Aubrey, born in the parish of Kingston-St.-Michael, in 1625, 
in his Diary, tells us that in 1633 he "entered into his grammar 
at the Latin School at Yatton Keynel (Wilts), in the church, 
where the curate, Mr. Hare, taught the eldest boys Virgil, Ovid, 
Cicero, etc." Next year Aubrey was removed to the adjoining 
parish of Leigh-de-la-Mere, under Mr. Robert Latimer, the 
Rector, who, " at 70, wore a dudgeon, with a knife and bodkin."* 
He had been the schoolmaster of Thomas Hobbes, the philoso- 
pher of Malmesbury. At these schools it was the fashion for 
the boys to cover their books with parchment — " old manuscript," 
says Aubrey, " which I was too young to understand ; but I was 
pleased with the elegancy of the writing, and the colored initial! 
letters." These manuscripts are believed to have been brought 

» Bodkin was, at this period, a name for a sniiall dagger. In this sense, it occurs in 
Shakspeare : 

" When he himself might his quietus make 
With a bare bodkin." — Hamlet. 
Dudgeon was likewise the name for a dagger : 

'* It was a serviceable dudgeon 
Either for fighting or for drudging."— i/^wc/i6rai. 



176 School-Bays of Eminent Men. 

from the Abbey of Malmesbury ; and tlie Rector, "when he 
brewed a barrell of special ale, his use was to stop the bunghole 
(under the clay) with a sheet of manuscript. He sayd nothing 
did it so well, which methought did grieve me then to see." In 
1638, Aubrey was "transplanted to Blandford School, in Dor- 
set," " in Mr. Wm. Gardner's time the most eminent school for 
the education of gentlemen in the West of England." Aubrey 
has left the following account of his school-days in the manu- 
script of his Lives of Eminent Men, in the Ashmolean Museum, 
Oxford : 

" When a boy bred at Eston (in eremiticall solitude), was very curious, his greatest de- 
light to be with the Artificers that came there, e. g. joyners, carpenters, cowpers, masons, 
and understood their trades: Noris vacuis, I drew and painted. In 1634, I was entred in 
Latin gramer by Mr. R. Latimer, a delicate and little person, rector of Leigh-de-la-Mere, — 
a mile fine walk, — who had an easie way of teaching ; and every time we asked leave to go 
forth, we had a Latin word from him, wch at our returne we were to tell him again: which 
in a little while amounted to a good number of words. 'Twas my unhappinesse in half a 
year to lose this good enformer by his death, and afterwards was under severall dull ignor- 
ant teachers till 12, 1638, about which time I was sent to Blandford schoole in Dorset, Mr. 
Sutton, B.D., who was ill natured Here I recovered my health and got my Latin and 
Greeke. Our usher had (by chance) a Cowper's Dictionary, which I had never seen be- 
fore. I was then in Terence. Perceiving this method, I read all in the booke where Ter. 
was. and then Cicero, which was the meanes by which I got my Latin. 'Twas a wonderfull 
helpe to my phansie in reading of Ovid's Metamorph. in English by Sandys, which made 
me understand Latin the better . Also I mett accidentally a book of my mother's — Bacon's 
Essayes — which first opened my understanding on the moralls (for Tallies Offices were 
too crabbed for my young yeares), and the excellent clearnesse of the style, and hints and 
transitions." He also notes: "at eight I was a kind of Engineer, and then fell to Draw- 
ing. Copied pictures in the parlor in a table book. Not very much care for gram." 

THE HON. ROBERT BOYLE, A TRUE PATRON AND CULTIVA- 
TOR OF SCIENCE. 

The early life of the Hon. Robert Boyle presents a remark- 
able instance of the right employment of wealth and station to 
obtain an excellent education. He was born in 1627, and was 
the youngest son of the great Earl of Cork. He tells us that 
his father, having " a perfect aversion for their fondness who use 
to breed their children so nice and tenderly that a hot sun or a 
good shower of rain as much endangers them as if they were 
made of butter or of sugar," committed him to a nurse aw^ay 
from home, under whose care he formed a vigorous constitution. 
He adds, that at an early age he acquired a habit of stuttering, 
from mocking other children. He was taught very young to 
speak both Latin and French ; and his studiousness and love of 
truth endeared him to his father. At eight years old he was 
sent to Eton, with his elder brother. Here he became immod- 
erately fond of study from "the accidental perusal of Quin- 
tus Curtius, which first made him in love with other than pedant- 
ic books ;" and the most effectual mode of preventing the ill 
effects of reading romance, he found to be the extraction of the 
square and cibe roots, and the more laborious operations of 



Anecdote Biographies. 177 

algebra. In his eleventh year, he and one of his brothers were 
sent with a French gentleman to travel on the Continent, and 
settled at Geneva, where a thunderstorm in the night was the cause 
of those religious impressions which he retained throughout his 
life. Here Boyle continued some time, studying rhetoric, logic, 
and political geography : and he cultivated both Hebrew and 
Greek, though a professed hater of verbal studies, that he might 
read the original of the Scriptures. At the same time he was 
taught fencing and dancing; his recreations were mall and tennis; 
and the reading of romances, which "assisted by a total discon- 
tinuance of the English tongue, in a short time taught him a 
skill in French somewhat unusual to strangers." The party 
afterward set off for Italy; at Florence, Boyle made himself 
master of the Italian language ; and became acquainted with the 
then recent astronomical discoveries of Galileo. He returned to 
England, and his father being dead, he retired to his family 
estate in Dorsetshire, and there gave himself up for five years 
to the study of natural philosophy and chemistry ; though he 
mentions among his occupations, essays in prose and ethics. 
" How few of the high born and wealthy have employed their 
advantages so well for the improvement of his mind as did 
Robert Boyle !" From this time to the end of his life he appears 
to have been engaged in study. His chemical experiments date 
from this period. He was one of the first members of "the In- 
visible College," subsequently the Royal Society; and he was 
afterward the great improver of the air-pump. It should not 
be forgotten that he devoted much of his fortune to promoting 
Christianity in the East. 

JOHN BUNYAN, AUTHOR OF "THE PILGRIM's PROGRESS." 

Who has not read The Pilgriin^s Progress f — "a book," says 
Southey, " which makes its way through the fancy to the un- 
derstanding and the heart: the child peruses it with wonder and 
delight : in youth we discover the genius which it displays ; its 
worth is apprehended as we advance in years ; and we perceive 
its merits feelingly in declining age." Lord Macaulay has said 
of Bunyan: "though there were many clever men in England 
during the latter half of the seventeenth century, there were 
only two great creative minds. One of these minds produced 
* The Paradise Lost ;* the other, ^ The Pilgrim's Progress.' " 

John Bunyan was born in the village of Elstow, within a mile 
of Bedford, in the year 1628, in a cottage which remained in its 
original state to our time. Bunyan's descent, to use his own 
words, "was of a low inconsiderable generation; my father's 
house," he says, " being of that rank that is meanest and most 

12 



178 School-Days of Eminent 3Ien. 

despised of all the families in the land." * He was, as his own 
statement implies, of a generation of tinkers, and born and bred 
to that calling, as his father had been before him.f His parents 
had several other children ; but they were able to put their son 
John to school in an age when very few of the poor were taught 
to read and write. The boy learnt both, " according to the rate 
of other poor men's children," but soon lost what little he had 
been taught, "even," he says, "almost utterly." Southey is of 
opinion that Bunyan's parents took some pains in impressing 
him with a sense of his religious duties ; otherwise, when, in his 
boyhood, he having but few equals in cursing, swearing, lying, 
and blaspheming, he would not have been visited by such dreams 
and such compunctious feelings as he has described. 

"Often,'' he saya, " after I had spent this and the other day in sin, I have in my bed 
been greatly afflicted, while asleep, with the apprehensions of devils and wicked Spirits, 
who still, as I then thought, labored to draw me away with them. " His waking reflections 
were not less terrible than these fearful visions of the night : and these, he says, " when 1 
waui but a child, but nine or ten years old, did so distress my soul, that then in the midi-t 
of my man}' sports and childish vanities, amidst my vain companions, I was often much 
cast-dov,'n, and afflicted in my mind therewith : yet could I not let go my sins." 

But these impresssions soon passed away, and were forgotten 
in the society of Bunyan's village companions : according to his 
own confession, he ran headlong into the boisterous vices which 
prove fatal to so many of the ignorant and the brutal. Yet, 
though he became so far hardened in profligacy, the sense of 
right and wrong was not extinguished in him, and it shocked 
him when he saw those who pretended to be religious act in a 
manner unworthy of their profession. Some providential escapes, 
during this part of his life, he looked back upon as so many 
judgments mixed with mercy. Once he fell into a creek of the 
sea, once out of a boat into the river Ouse, near Bedford, and 
each time was narrowly saved from drowning. One day an 
adder crossed his path ; he stunned it with a stick, then forced 
open its mouth with a stick, and plucked out the tongue, which 
he supposed to be the sting, with his fingers ; " by which act," 
he says, " had not God been merciful unto me, I might, by my 
desperateness, have brought myself to an end." If this indeed 
were an adder, and not a harmless snake, his escape from the 
fanss was more remarkable than he was aware of. A circum- 
Stance which was likely to impress him more deeply, occurred 
in the eighteenth year of his age, when, being a soldier in the 
Parliament's army, he was drawn out to go to the siege of Lei- 
cester ; one of the company wished to go in his stead ; Bunyan 

» "Grace abounding to the Chief of Sinners," by John Bunyan. 

t In 1828, there were shown at ELstow the remains of a closet, in which Banyan had 
forked as a tinker. 



Anecdote Biographies, 179 

consented to exchange with him; and this volunteer substitute, 
standing sentinel one day at the siege, was shot through the head 
with a musket-ball. 

Bunyan, probably before he was nineteen, chanced to " light 
upon a wife," whose father, as she often told him, was a godly 
man : the young couple began housekeeping without so much 
as a dish or spoon; but Bunyan had his trade, and she brought 
for her portion two books which her father had left her at his 
death: The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven was one; the 
other was Bay ley. Bishop of Bangor's Practice of Piety. These 
books he sometimes read with her; and they begat in him 
some desire to reform his vicious life, and made him fall in 
eagerly with the religion of the times, go to church twice a-day 
with the foremost, and there devoutly say and sing as others 
did ; — yet, according to his own account, retaining his wicked 
life. How he was first reclaimed through a Puritan sermon 
against Sabbath-breaking ; how he joined a Baptist congregation 
in Bedford, and became its preacher ; was next apprehended for 
holding " unlawful meetings and conventicles," and was impris- 
oned in Bedford gaol 12^ years ; we have no space to tell. His 
library, while in prison, consisted but of two books — the Bible, 
which he read intently, and especially historically ; and Fox's 
Book of Martyrs, which copy is now preserved in the Bedford- 
shire General Library. While in prison, he wrote several 
works, including The Holy War, and Grace abounding to the 
Chief of Sinners, a narrative of his own life and religious expe- 
rience. But his chief work is The Pilgrim^ s Progress from this 
World to that which is to Come, which has been translated into 
most of the European languages. 

If it is not a well of English undefiled to which the poet as well as the philologist must 
repair, if they would drink of the living waters, it is a clear stream of current English, 
the vernacular ppeech of his age, sometimes, indeed, in its rusticity and coarseness, but 
always in its plainness and its strength. To this natural style Bunyan is in some degree 
beholden for his general popularity; his language is everywhere level to the most ignorant 
reader, and to the meanest capacity: there is a homely reality about it; a nursery tale is 
not more intelligible, in its manner of narration to a child. — Southey, 

ISAAC BARROW AT THE CHARTER-HOUSE. 

Dr. Isaac Barrow, the eminent mathematician and divine, 
was born in 1630, in the city of London, where his father was 
linen-draper to Charles IL The young Barrow was first sent 
to the Charter-house, where he was only noted for his idleness 
and love of fighting; he was on this account removed to a school 
at Felstead, in Essex, where he abandoned his idle habits, and 
studied so successfully, that his master made him a sort of tutor 
to Lord Fairfax, of Ireland, then a boy in the same school. 
The fortunes of his family had now begun to suffer for their 



180 SchooUDays of Eminent Men, 

stanch adherence to the royal cause, and the younpj student 
must have given up his career of learning had not Dr. Ham- 
mond, Canon of Christchurch, given him the means of complet- 
ing his education. He died 1677, aged 47. 

Few persons ever attained such a deserved reputation in such 
various branches of science and learning, whose life was so short, 
as the celebrated Isaac Barrow. His sermons will remain spe- 
cimens of profound erudition, of splendid eloquence, and of the 
manner in which a subject may be exhausted, — so long as the 
Church of England and the English language exist. For his 
mathematical proficiency he received the highest honors from 
the University of Cambridge; and he was elected to the master- 
ship of Trinity in 1672. He was a great writer of poetry'; and 
at one time studied anatomy, botany, and chemistry, with a view 
to the practice of physic. 

DRYDEN AT WESTMINSTER AND OXFORD. 

John Dryden (or Driden), one of the greatest masters of 
English verse, was born on the 9th of August, 1631, in the 
parsonage-house of Oldwincle All-Saints, Northamptonshire. 
The house is still standing, and a small apartment in it is still 
known as " Dryden's Room." He received the rudiments of his 
education at Tichmarsh, or at the neighboring grammar-school 
of Oundle. "We boast," says the inscription at Tichmarsh, on 
the monument erected by Dryden's relative (Mrs. Creed), "that 
he was bred and had his first learning here, where he has often 
made us happie by his kind visits and most delightful conversa- 
tion." He was afterward admitted a King's scholar at West- 
minster School, under Dr. Busby, for whom he contracted a warm 
and lasting regard. He was not, however, indifferent to the 
Doctor's severity in the use of the rod; for the poet compares 
his over-correction of some verses to "our Master Busby," who 
" used to whip a boy so long till he made him a confirmed block- 
head." Yet Dryden was so strongly impressed with Busby's 
high moral character and excellent system of tuition, that he 
placed two of his sons under him. The Doctor was the first 
to discover and encourage Dryden's poetical talent ; but of his 
performance in this way when at Westminster, the only record 
we have is, that he translated the third Satire of Persius as a 
Thursday night's exercise.* Other pieces of a similar kind were 
produced, and remained in the hands of Dr. Busby, but were 
never recovered. Here also, while yet a King's scholar, in 

* To the end of the third Satire of Persius, Dryden afBxed the following note : " I re- 
member I translated this satire when I was a King's scholar at Westminster School, for a 
Thursday night's exercise; and believe that it and many other of my exercises of this 
nature, in English verse, are still ia the hands of my learned master, the Rev. Dr. Busby." 



Anecdote BiograpJdes, 181 

1649, Drjden "wrote an Elegy on the Death of Lord Hastings, 
and sorae commendatory verses on the Divine Epigrams of his 
friend, John Hoddesdon, both of which were published in the 
following year. 

In the library at "Westminster School is a small portion of a 
form which bears, in upright letters, the name I DRYDEN, 
believed to have been cut by the boy-poet with a penknife : it is 
kept cased in glass, and is ornamented with gold and diamonds. 
There was also within the present century to be seen the poet's 
name written upon the wall of a room in the Manor House, 
Chiswick, which was frequently resorted to by Busby and his 
pupils. Dryden came up as a Westminster scholar to Trinity 
College, Cambridge, May 11, 1G50. Of his career at College, 
almost the only notice in the archives is dated July 19, 1G52: 
"put out of Commons for a fortnight at least," confined to the 
walls, and sentenced to read a confession of his crime at the fel- 
lows' table during dinner time — this offense being disobedience 
to the vice-master, and "contumacy in taking the punishment 
inflicted by him." He took his degree of Bachelor of Arts, 
and was made Master of Arts, but never became a Fellow of 
the College ; and he always entertained feelings of aversion for 
Cambridge, which he did not hesitate to avow in the Prologues 
he wrote many years afterward for delivery at Oxford. Dryden 
has left these interesting memorials of his early studies : 

*' For my own part, who must confess it to my shame, that I never read anything but 
for pleasure, histoi-y has always been the most delightful entertainment of my hfe." — Li/e 
ef Plutarch, 1683. 

'* 1 had read Polybius in English, with the pleasure of a boy, before I was ten years of 
age." — Character of Fohjbiiis, 1692. 

Hence Dryden is concluded to have spent more time over 
Thucydides, Tacitus, and the rest of the Greek and Roman his- 
torians, than he gave up to the poets, ancient or modern. He 
cultivated slowly the poetical faculty ; he was nearly thirty years 
of age before he published his poem on the death of Cromwell ; 
and his early productions followed each other at long intervals. 
His Essay on Dramatic Poesy, elegantly written, is the earliest 
regular work of the kind in the language, and contains the 
manly avowal — the first after the Restoration — of the suprem- 
acy of Shakspeare. Dryden's language, like his thoughts, is 
truly English : his verse flows with natural freedom and mag- 
nificence ; his satire is keen and trenchant ; and the style of his 
prose is easy, natural, and graceful. He was made Poet-Lau- 
reate, but deprived of his office by the Revolution. "The 
prose of Dryden," says Sir Walter Scott, "may rank with the 
best in the English language. It is no less of his own forma- 



182 School-Days of Imminent Men, 

tion than his versification; is equally spirited and equally har- 
monious." 

PHILIP HENRY AT WESTMINSTER. 

Philip Henry was born on St. Bartholomew's Day, 1631, at 
Whitehall, where his father was keeper of the orchard, and page 
of the back-stairs: in these situations he was much respected 
by Charles I., who remembered him in his sad hour of afflic- 
tion, and on the way to his trial took an affecting leave of his old 
servant. Philip had for his sponsors the Earls of Pembroke 
and Carlisle, and the Countess of Salisbury; he became the 
playfellow of the young princes, and was kindly noticed by Laud, 
for whom, when he came to the palace, Philip used to open the 
water-gate. He was sent, first, to St. Martin's School; then to 
a school at Battersea; at 12 years old he was removed to West- 
minster, and placed in the fourth form ; and was in due time ad- 
mitted " Head into college." Busby soon took a great liking to 
the boy, and employed him, with other favorite scholars, in col- 
lecting materials for his Greek Grammar. Philip was early 
imbued with Puritanical principles by his mother, and with her 
used to attend all the lectures, which lasted sometimes from eight 
in the morning till four in the afternoon. Lord Pembroke still 
continued his patronage to him, and at his election gave him the 
means of defraying his first expenses at the University. Philip 
Henry ever retained a great affection for the University, as well 
as for the school in which he had been first taught; and was 
wont to allege as an excuse for having been less studious than 
he should have been, that, "coming from Westminster School, 
his attainments in school learning were beyond what others gen- 
erally had that came from other schools, so that he was tempted 
to think there was no need to keep pace with others." 

SIR CHRISTOPHER "VVREN AT WESTMINSTER AND OXFORD. 

Thousands of the indwellers of the capital which Sir Chris- 
topher Wren has adorned with no fewer than forty public build- 
ings, are, probably, unacquainted with the extent and variety of 
the abilities and acquirements of this great architect and excellent 
man. Seldom has the promise of youth been so well redeemed 
as in Wren. He was born in 1632, at East Knoyle, in Wiltshire, 
of which parish his father was then rector. He was a small and 
weakly child, whose rearing required much care. He was edu- 
cated at home by his father and a private tutor, until he was 
placed under the special care of Dr. Busby, at Westminster 
School, having at the same time Dr. Holder as a mathematical 
tutor. Aubrey describes young Wren as " a youth of prodigious 



Anecdote Biographies. 183 

inventive wit," of whom Holder "was as tender as if he had 
been his own child, who gave him his first introductions into 
Geometry and Arithmetic ; and when he was a young scholar 
at the University of Oxford, was a very necessary and kind 
friend," The first-fruits of young Wren's inventive faculty was 
put forth in 1645, in his thirteenth year, by the production of a 
new astronomical instrument, which he dedicated to his father, 
with a dutiful Latin address, and eighteen hexameter verses. 
This invention was followed up by an exercise in physics, on 
the origin of rivers, and by the invention of a pneumatic engine, 
and a peculiar instrument in gnomonics. His mind ripened 
early into maturity and strength ; he loved the classics ; but 
mathematics and astronomy were from the first his favorite 
pursuits. 

In his fourteenth year. Wren was admitted as a gentleman- 
commoner at Wadham College, Oxford, where, by his acquire- 
ments and inventions, he gained the friendship of Dr. Wilkins, 
Seth Ward (Bishop of Salisbury), Hooke, whom he assisted in 
his Microffraphia, and other eminent scientific men, whose meet- 
ings laid the foundation of the Royal Society. In his fifteenth 
year, he translated Oughtred's Geometrical Dialing into Latin ; 
and about this time he made a reflecting dial for the ceiling of a 
room, embellished with figures representing astronomy and 
geometry, with their attributes, tastefully drawn with a pen. 
He next took out a patent for an instrument to write with two 
pens at the same time ; and he invented a weather-clock, and an 
instrument wherewith to write in the dark. 

In 1654, Evelyn visited Oxford, and went to All-Souls, where 
he says, "I saw that miracle of a youth, Christopher Wren." 
He ranked high in his knowledge of anatomical science ; he 
made the drawings for Dr. Wilkins's Treatise on the Brain ; 
and he was the originator of the physiological experiment of 
injecting various liquors into the veins of living animals. In 
1653, he was elected a Fellow of All-Souls ; and by the time 
that he had attained his twenty-fourth year, his name had gone 
over Europe, and he was considered as one of that band of emi- 
nent men whose discoveries were raising the fame of I^nglish 
science. In 1657, he was appointed Professor of Astronomy at 
Gresham College ; three years later, Savilian Professor at 
Oxford; and received the degree of D.C.L. in 1661. It was 
after delivering his lecture on Astronomy at Gresham College, 
on Nov. 28, 1660, that the foundation of the Royal Society was 
discussed ; and its archives bear the amplest testimony to his 
knowledge and industry, as exhibited in his commentaries on 
almost every subject connected with science and art. His 



184 School-Days of Eminent Men. \ 

inventions and discoveries alone are said to amount to fifty- 
three. ■ I 

Wren's scientific reputation probably led to his being, in 1661, 
appointed assistant to Sir John Denham, the Surveyor- General ; 
and in 1663, he was commissioned to survey and report upon 
St. Paul's Cathedral, with a view to its restoration, or rather, 
the rebuilding of the body of the fabric. Tbe Great Fire 
decided the long-debated question whether there should be a new 
cathedral. He was the worst paid architect of whom we have 
any record: his salary as architect of St. Paul's was only 200/. 
a year ; his pay for rebuilding the churches in the city was only 
100/. a year; and it is related that on his completion of the 
beautiful church of St. Stephen, Walbrook, the parishoners pre- 
sented his wife with 20 guineas ! 

With all these architectural pursuits, Wren found time to pre- 
side at the Royal Society, and take part in experiments : many 
great men have shed luster upon its chair; few to a greater 
degree than Sir Christopher Wren.* 

DR. SOUTH AT WESTMINSTER. 

This celebrated wit and eminent preacher, who has been aptly 
denominated "the scourge of fanaticism,'' was born at Hackney 
in 1633, and was sent early to Westminster School. Here his 
master, Busby, said of him, with his characteristic penetration, 
"I see great talents in that sulky boy, and I shall endeavor to 
bring them out;" a w^ork which he accomplished by severe dis- 
cipline. When reader of the Latin prayers for the morning, 
South publicly prayed for King Charles the First byname "but 
an hour or two at most before his sacred head was cut off." 

In his Sermon "prepared for delivery at a solemn meeting of 
his school-fellows in the Abbey," South, with pride and satisfac- 
tion, paid this tribute to his place of early education ; 

Westminster ia a school which neither disposes men to division in Church, nor sedition 
in State, — a school so untaintedly loyal that I can truly and knowingly arer that, in the 
worst of times (in which it was my lot to be a member of it) we really were King's Scholars, 
as well as called so. And this loyal genius always continued amongst us, and grew up with 
us, which made that noted Coryphaeus (D. J. Owen) often say, '-that it would never be 
well with the nation until this school was suppressed." 

After South's election to Christchurch, Oxford, he distin- 
guished himself by his classical attainments, and composed an 
elegant Latin poem addressed to Cromwell, on the conclusion of 
the Dutch war : for this he was strongly censured, but he, 
probably, regarded his verses as a college exercise. He was 
ordained in 1659 ; and in 1661, was made chaplain to the great 

* Weld's Ilistory of the Royal Society, vol. i. 



Anecdote Biographies. 185 

Lord Clarendon, whose notice he had attracted by a speech 
delivered at his investiture as Chancellor of the University. 

The sermons of this great man are the most enduring monu- 
ments of his wit and learning. Their effect is abundantly 
evidenced in No. 125 (by Addison) of the Guardian; and No. 
205 (by Fuller) of the Tatler ; and in No 6 (by Steele) of the 
latter, allusion is made to his virtuous life, and constant attend- 
ance on public worship. 

South died in 171 G, aged 82. His remains lay for four days 
in the Jerusalem Chamber, and were carried thence into the 
College Hall ; they were attended to his grave in the Abbey by 
the prebendaries, masters, and scholars, and all in any way con- 
nected with the royal foundation. 

When South's remains lay in the College Hall, Barber, then 
Captain of the School, spoke a Latin oration over the body 
before it was interred in Westminster Abbey. This was the 
oration, for the unlicensed printing of which Curll received his 
well-known castigation from the Westminster boys, thus related 
in a letter of the time: — "Being fortunately nabbed within the 
limits of Dean's Yard by the king's scholars, there he met with 
a college salutation : for he was first presented with the ceremony 
of the blanket, in which, when the skeleton had been well shook, 
he was carried in triumph to the school ; and before receiving a 
grammatical correction for his false concords, he was reconduc- 
ted to Dean's Yard, and on his knees asking pardon of the 
aforesaid Mr. Barber for his offense, he was kicked out of the 
Yard, and left to the huzzas of the rabble." 

There is a print, in three compartments, representing the three 
separate punishments which Curll underwent. 

BISHOP KEN AT WINCHESTER. 

When the Wykehamists held their 450th anniversary of the 
opening of Winchester College in 1846, Ken was commemora- 
ted in the following lines ; 

" In these cloisters holy Ken strengthened with deeper prayer 
His own and his dear scholars' souls to what pure souls should dare ; 
Bold to rebuke enthroned sin, with calm undazzled faith, 
Whether amid the pomp of courts, or on the bed of death ; 
Firm against kingly terror in his free country's cause, 
Faithful to God's anointed against a world's applause." 

Thomas Ken, son of an attorney of Furnival's Inn, Holborn, 
was born at Little Berkhampstead, in Hertfordshire, in the year 
1637. Where he received his first education is not known ; nor 
by whose recommendation he became a scholar on William of 
Wykeham's college at Winchester. Ken had a musical voice, 
which had no small recommendation for admission to all ancient 



186 School-Bays of Eminent Men. 

ecclesiastical establishments, from their foundation ; for/ in after 
life, it is known that no day passed without his singing to his 
lute his evening and morning hymn, the origin of those beauti- 
ful morning and evening hymns sung at this day by the children 
of every parish. The Rev. W. Lisle Bowles thus sketches his 
fellow- Wykehamite at Winchester : 

At the age of thirteen, the scholastic novitiate at Winchester is probably placed in tho 
form called Junior part of Fifth ; and is become, with a band, and black dangling gown, 
a Junior of Fifth or Sixth Chamber. 

As junior, he is up before the other boys of The same chamber. In the glimmering and 
cold wintry mornings, he would perhaps repeat to himself — watching the slow morning 
through the grated window — one of the beautiful ancient hymns composed for the schol- 
ars on the foundation : 

Jam lucis ordo sydere 

Deum precemur supplices, 
Ut in diurnis actibus, 

Nos servet a nocentibus. 

Now the star of morning light 

Rises on the rear of night ; 

Suppliant to our God we pray, 

From ills to guard us through this day. 

Rising before the others, he had little to do except to apply a candle to a large fagot, in 
winter, which had been already laid. 

On the fifth or sixth day, our junior is at ease among his companions of the same age ; 
he is found, for the first time, attempting to wield a oricketbat ; and when his hour of 
play is over, he plies at his scob* the labors of his silent lesson, or sits scanning his 
"nonsense" verses, which, nonsense as they have been called, have led the way to form 
the most accurate and elegant scholars, however such rudiments may be derided. 

Here cares are soon at an end ; the holidays are approaching ; and who more blithely 
than Ken, with his musical voice, can sing tho old Wjkehamical canticle, Dulce Domiim, 
from its style judged to have been written before the Reformation. 

Now every boy pants for Whitsuntide, when is sung in choral glee — 

Musa, libros mitte, fessa, 
Mitte, pensa dura. 

Till that day arrives, after the "pensa dura" of four days, the whole train of youthful 
scholars is seen streaming twice a week, by the side of the station, toward Catharine-hill, 
a large, round, conical hill, front in the Downs ; a scene, since the foundation of the school, 
dedicated to youthful recreation and short oblivion of school cares. 

Ken left Winchester College for Oxford a super-annuate 
between eighteen and nineteen years of age, 1655-6. As there 
was no vacancy at New College, he was entered at Hart-hall, 
afterward Hertford College; but in 1657, he was admitted 
Probationer Fellow of New College. The' Puritans were then 
in full sway, and Ken did not take his first degree of Bachelor 
of Arts till 1661 ; he soon after entered into Orders ; and at the 
proper age commencing Master of Arts, may have employed his 
time as tutor of the younger members of the college, where, to 
this day, is pointed out the room in w^hich Ken read and 
wrote, and accompanied his morning and evening hymn with 
his lute. 

In 1666, Ken being elected Fellow of Winchester, returned 

*An oaken box, which contains his few books. On each side are places for pens and 
ink. The outer cover is placed open. The depository of books has another cover, on 
which the young scholar writes his task, or reads his lesson. 



Anecdote Biographies. 187 

thither; and in 1669, he was promoted to a prebendal stall in 
Winchester Cathedral, through the influence of his brother-in- 
law, Izaak Walton, with Morley, Bishop of Winchester. He 
now composed his devotional Manual for the use of the Win- 
chester scholars ; but his most interesting compositions are those 
affecting and beautiful hymns which were sung by himself, and 
written to be sung in the chambers of the boys, before chapel in 
the morning, and before they lay down on their small boarded 
beds at night. Of Ken's own custom of singing his hymn to 
the Creator at the earliest dawn, Hawkins, his biographer, 
relates, '' that neither his (Ken's) study might be the aggressor 
on his hours of instruction, or what he judged duty prevent his 
improvement, he strictly accustomed himself to but one hour's 
sleep, which obliged him to rise at one or two o'clock in the 
morning, or sometimes earlier ; and he seemed to go to rest with 
no other purpose than the refreshing and enabling him with more 
vigor and cheerfulness to sing his Morning Hymn, as he used to 
do, to his lute, before he put on his clothes." When he com- 
posed those delicious hymns, he was in the fresh morn of life ; 
and who does not feel his heart in unison with that delightful 
season, when such a strain as this is heard? — 

"Awake, my soul, and with the sun, 
Thy daily stage of duty run ; 
Shake off dull sloth, and early rise, 
To pay thy morning sacrifice. 

****** 

Lord, I my vows to thee renew; 
Disperse my j^ins as morning dew." 

May we not also say that when the Evening Hymn is heard, like 
the sounds that bid farewell to evening's parting plain, it fills 
the silent heart with devotion and repose : 

"All praise to thee, my God, this night, 
For all the blessings of the light ; 
Keep me, oh 1 keep me. King of Kings, 
Under thine own Almighty wings. 

Forgive me. Lord, for thy dear Son, 
The ills that I this day have done ; 
That, with the world, myself, and Thee, 
I, ere I sleep, at peace may be." 

Ken was, for his faithful discharge of duty, appointed by 
Charles, Bishop of Bath and Wells, He was earnest and 
unwearied: he established many schools, and wrote his "Expo- 
sition of the Church Catechism" for their use. He was an 
eloquent and industrious preacher, and James II. said he was the 
best among the Protestants, He was one of the Seven Bishops 
committed to the Tower for refusing to read James's declaration 
in favor of Romanism ; and he was suspended and deprived by 



188 School-Bays of Eminent Men, 

William III. for refusing to take the oath of allegiance. But 
he found an asylum in Lord Weymouth's mansion of Longleat, 
and here he walked, and read, and hymned, and prayed, and 
slept to do the same again. The only property he brought from 
Wells palace was his library, part of which is still preserved at 
Longleat. In an upper chamber he composed most of his 
poems of fervid piety. He died in 1711, in his 74th year, and 
was carried to his grave, in Frome churchyard, by six of the 
poorest men of the parish, and buried under the eastern window 
of the church, at sunrise, in reference to the words of his Morn- 
ing Hymn : 

"Awake, my soul, and tvilh the sun.'''' 

The same words are sung, to the same tune, every Sunday, by 
the parish children, in the parish church of Frome, and over his 
grave who composed the words, who sung them himself, to the 
same air, 187 years ago: yet. Ken sleeps in the churchyard 
without an inscription or name ! 

SIR DUDLEY NORTH HOW HE MADE UP FOR HIS DULLNESS 

AT SCHOOL. 

The history and habits of this remarkable man strongly 
exemplify the successful pursuit of business and philosophy in 
one individual. 

Sir Dudley North was born in 1641, and having been placed 
at Bury, to learn Latin, "he made but an indifferent scholar," 
partly through the severity of his master, who used "to correct 
him at all turns, with or without a fault," till he was driven 
almost to despair ; and partly to his having " too much spirit, 
which could not be suppressed by conning his book, but must 
be rather employed in regular action." It was this "backward- 
ness in school," his brother, Roger North, thinks, " that probably 
determined his destination." "But the young man himself," he 
adds, "had a strange bent to traffic, and, while he was at school, 
drove a subtle trade among the boys by buying and selling. In 
short, it was considered that he had learning enough for a mer- 
chant, but not phlegm enough for any sedentary profession." 
He was next sent to a writing and arithmetic school for some 
time, and then bound by his father. Lord North, to a Turkey 
merchant. Dudley had, however, much time on his hands, and 
he "took a fancy to the binding of books ; and having procured 
a stitching-board, press, and cutter, fell to work, and bound up 
books of account for himself, and divers for his friends, in a 
very decent manner. He had a distinguishing genius toward 
all sorts of mechanic exercises." 



A7iecdoie Biographies, 189 

After some time, he was sent out by his master as supercargo, 
with an adventure to Archangel, where he was to ship another 
cargo for Smyrna, and then to take up his residence in the latter 
place as factor. In this trading voyage he had an eye for every- 
thing worth observing, and kept a regular journal of all that he 
saw and befell him, which he transmitted to London, in letters, 
to his elder brother, Francis, afterward Lord Keeper Guildford. 
But North greatly complained of the idleness in which he was 
obliged to pass his time. tTaving, on his return from Archangel, 
been detained for some time at Leghorn, he visited Florence, 
fifty-five miles off, and there and at Leghorn acquired some 
knowledge of Italian. "The language," he remarks, "is not 
difficult ; and I find the little Latin I have to be an extraordinary 
help in attaining it." 

He began business at Smyrna, and thence removed to Con- 
stantinople, where, by industry and perseverance, he became a 
wealthy man ; still showing the same inquisitiveness and love of 
knowledge, the same activity, and capacity of overcoming diffi- 
culties, which had characterized him from his boyhood. He not 
only made himself master of the political constitution and sta- 
tistics of the country, but even acquired such skill in the Turk- 
ish law, that he tried in the Turkish courts above 500 causes 
without employing interpreters, but speaking for himself. He 
spoke the Turkish language fluently, wrote it well, and composed 
a Turkish dictionary ; and "no Frank ever spoke the vulgar 
idiom so correct and perfect as he did." Upon his return to 
England, he settled as a merchant in London, and became a 
member of Parliament, a Commissioner of Customs, and then 
a Lord of the Treasury. Before this he had learned Algebra, 
"a new kind of arithmetic, which he had never heard of 
before." 

After the Revolution, he retired from public life, returned to 
business, and once more withdrew. He then employed himself 
in illustrating mechanic powers, which he sought among the 
engines, tackle, etc., used in building St. Paul's Cathedral ; Sir 
Christopher Wren often giving replies to his inquiries. In his 
leisure, Dudley read such books as pleased him : and (though he 
was a kind of dunce at school) be now recovered so much Latin 
as to make him take pleasure in the best classics. 

One of North's favorite recreations wa"! swimming in the Thames. " He could," says his 
brother, " live in thf' water an afternoon with as much ease as others walk upon land. 
He shot the bridge (old London bridge) divers times at low water, Avhich showed him net 
only active, but intrepid ; for courage is required to bear the very sight of that tremendous 
cascade, which few can endure to pass iu a boat." 



190 School-Bays of Eminent Men, 

NEWTON AT GRANTHAM AND CAMBRIDGE. 

The childhood and education of that master-mind which, bj 
the establishment of the theory of Gravitation, "immortalized 
his name, and perpetuated the intellectual glory of his country," 
next demand our attention. Isaac Newton was born in 1642, 
in the manor-house of Woolsthorpe, close to the village of Col- 
sterworth, about six miles south of Grantham, in Lincolnshire. 
He was a posthumous child, and was of such a diminutive size 
when born, that he might have been put into a quart mug. At 
the usual age he was sent to two small day-schools at Skillington 
and Stoke, two hamlets near Woolsthorpe, and here he was 
taught reading, writing, and arithmetic. At the age of twelve 
he was sent to the grammar-school at Grantham. According to 
his own confession, Newton was extremely inattentive to his 
studies, and stood very low in the school. When he was last in 
the lowermost form but one, the boy above him, as they were 
going to school, kicked him on the stomach ; Newton subse- 
quently challenged the boy to fight, the combat took place in the 
church-yard, and Newton was the victor ; his antagonist still 
stood above him in the form, until, after many a severe struggle, 
Newton not only gained the individual victory, but rose to the 
highest place in the school. 

Newton had not long been at school before he exhibited a 
taste for mechanical inventions. With the aid of little saws, 
hammers, hatchets, and other tools, during his play-hours, he 
constructed models of known machines and amusing contrivances; 
as a windmill, a water-clock, and a carriage, to be moved by the 
person who sat in it ; and by watching the workmen in erecting 
a windmill near Grantham, Newton acquired such knowledge of 
its mechanism, that he completed a large working model of it, 
which was frequently placed upon the top of the house in wliich 
Newton lived- at Grantham, and was put in motion by the action, 
of the wind upon its sails. Although Newton was at this time 
a "sober, silent, and thinking lad," who never took part in the 
games of his school-fellows, but employed all his leisure hours in 
"knocking and hammering in his lodging-room," yet he occasion- 
ally taught the boys to "play philosophically." He introduced 
the flying of paper kites, and is said to have investigated their 
best forms and proportions, as well as the number and position 
of the points to which the string should be attached. He con- 
structed also lanterns of " crimpled paper," in which he placed a 
candle to light him to school in the dark winter mornings ; and 
in dark nights he tied them to the tails of his kites, which the 
terrified country-people took for comets. Meanwhile, in the 
yard of the house where he lived, Newton was frequently 



Anecdote Biographies. 191 

observed to watch the motion of the sun ; he drove wooden pegs 
into the walls and roofs of the buildings, as gnoraons, to mark 
by their shadows the hours and half-hours of the daj. It does 
not appear that he knew how to adjust these lines to the latitude 
of Grantham; but he is said to have succeeded, after some years* 
observation, in making them so exact, that anybody could tell 
what o'clock it was by Isaac's Dial, as it was called ; and, prob- 
ably, about this time, he carved two dials on the walls of his 
own house at Woolsthorpe, one of which is now in the museum 
of the Royal Society. Newton also became expert with his 
pencil : his room was furnislied with pictures, drawn, some from 
prints, and others from life, in frames made by himself: among 
the portraits were several of the King's heads ; Dr. Donne ; Mr. 
Stokes, his teacher at Grantham ; and King Charles I. ; also, 
drawings of "birds, beasts, men, ships, and mathematical dia- 
grams, executed with charcoal on the wall, which remained till 
the house was pulled down in 1711." Although Newton stated 
that he "excelled particularly in making verses," no authentic 
specimen of his poetry has been preserved ; and in later years, 
he often expressed a dislike for poetry. During the seven years 
which he spent at Grantham, to the society of his school-fellows 
he preferred that of the young ladies who lived in the same 
house, and he often made little tables, cupboards, etc., for them 
to set their dolls and their trinkets upon. One of these ladies, 
when she had reached the age of 82, confessed that Newton had 
been in love with her, but that smallness of income prevented 
their marriage. 

When Newton had reached his fifteenth year, he was recalled 
from the school at Grantham to take charge of his mother's 
farm : he was thus frequently sent to Grantham market, to dis- 
pose of grain and other agricultural produce, which, however, 
he generally left to an old farm servant who accompanied him, 
and Newton made his way to the garret of the house where he 
had lived to amuse himself with a parcel of old books left there ; 
and afterward he would intrench himself on the wayside between 
Woolsthorpe and Grantham, devouring some favorite author till 
his companion's return from market. And when his mother 
sent him into the fields to watch the sheep and cattle, he would 
perch himself under a tree with a book in his hand, or shaping 
models with his knife, or watching the movements of an under- 
shot water-wheel. One of the earliest scientific experiments 
which Newton made was in 1G58, on the day of the great storm, 
when Cromwell died, and when he himself had just entered his 
1 Gth year. 

Newton's mother was now convinced that her son was not 



192 School-Days of Eminent Men. 

destined to be a farmer ; and this, with his uncle finding him 
under a hedge, occupied in the solution of a mathematical 
problem, led to his being again sent to Grantham School, and 
then to Trinity College, Cambridge, which thence became the 
real birthplace of Newton's genius. AVe have not space to 
detail how he mastered Sanderson's Logic, and Kepler's Optics, 
before he attended his tutor's lectures upon those works ; how 
he bought a book of Judicial Astrology at Stourbridge Fair, 
and to understand its trigonometry, purchased an English Euclid, 
which he soon threw aside for Descartes' Geometry; his long- 
continued observations upon a comet in 1664; his first discovery 
of Fluxions in 1665; his first study of Gravity, suggested to him 
by the fall of an apple from a tree while sitting in his garden at 
Woolsthorpe ; his purchase of a glass prism at Stourbridge 
Fair; his first application to optical discoveries ; his construction 
of telescopes,* etc. But we cannot leave him without remark- 
ing that late in life, ascribing whatever he had accomplished to 
the effect of patient and continuous thought rather than to any 
peculiar genius with which nature had endowed him, he looked 
upon himself and his labors in a very different light from that 
in which both he and they were regarded by mankind. "I 
know not," he remarked, a short time before his death, "what 
I may appear to the world ; but to myself I seem to have been 
only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in 
now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than 
ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered 
before me." How touching is this sense of humility, and con- 
trast of the littleness of human knowledge with the extent of 
human ignorance ! 

WILLIAM PENN AT OXFORD. 

William Penn, whose name has become "throughout all civil- 
ized countries a synonyme for polity and philanthropy," was 
born October 14, 1644. He grew up into a graceful and prom- 
ising child at Wanstead, in Essex, and was sent to learn the 
first rudiments of scholarship at a grammar-school at Chigwell, 
then recently founded by the Archbishop of York. When he 
was eleven years old, his father. Admiral Penn, was ar- 
rested by order of Cromwell for his alleged share in the failure 
of an attack on Hispaniola; and j'^oung Penn, "a quick-witted 
and affectionate child, was overwhelmed with melancholy " at 
his father's arrest. " While in this state of mind, he was one 
day surprised in his room, where he was alone, with an inward 

* These particulars of Xewton's early years have been abridged from Sir David Brews- 
ter's enlarged Life of the great philosopher. 



Anecdote Biographies. 193 

and sudden sense of happiness, akin to a strong religious emo- 
tion ; the chamber at the same time appearing as if filled with a 
soft and holy light." This incident has been regarded by some 
as a miracle, — by others as a delusion; but Mr. HejDworth Dixon, 
the earnest biographer of Penn, considers the lively and sensitive 
child being in a morbid condition of mind, and his father being 
in a few days set at liberty, "it is probable that the glory which fill- 
ed the room and the feeling which sufFused his frame were simply 
the effects of a sensitive temperament over-excited by the glad 
tidings of this release." His father then retired with his family 
into Ireland, where William " rapidly improved, under a private 
tutor from England, in useful and elegant scholarship. He ex- 
hibited already a rare aptitude for business. In person he was 
tall and slender, but his limbs w^ere well knit, and he had a pas- 
sionate fondness for field sports, boating, and other manly exer- 
cises. In the elementary parts of education he had already 
made such progress that the Admiral thought him ready to be- 
gin his more serious studies at the University; and,^ after due 
consideration, it was resolved that he should go to Oxford." 
After a year's delay, to Oxford he went, where he matriculated 
as a gentleman commoner at Christchurch, of which Dr. John 
Owen was Dean: South was Orator to the University ; and here 
were Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, and " the noblest and most 
notable of all ornaments of Oxford at that day" — John Locke. 
Penn proved at college a hard student, a skillful boater, and ad- 
venturous sportsman ; his reading was solid aud extensive, and 
his memory excellent. His great pleasure and recreation while 
at Christchurch was in reading the doctrinal discussions to which 
the Puritan idea had given rise ; and the preaching of the new 
doctrines taught by George Fox, and the threatened restoration 
of popish usages, led Penn and others into forcible opposition to 
the orders of the Court, for which they w^ere expelled the Uni- 
versity. For a boy, he left Oxford with a profound acquaint- 
ance with history and theology. Of languages he had more 
than an ordinary share. Then, and afterward, while at Saumur, 
(in France), he read the chief writers of Greece and Italy in 
their native idioms, and acquired a thorough knowledge of French, 
German, Dutch, and Italian. Later in life he added to his stock 
two or three dialects of the Red Men. Upon his return to Eng- 
land, Penn's father entered him as a student at Lincoln's Inn, 
that he might acquire some knowledge of his country's laws. 
He did not remain long in London, but returned to Ireland ; and 
at Cork, hearing an old Oxford acquaintance preach the doc- 
trines of George Fox, from that night Penn became a Quaker 
in his heart. 
13 



194 School-Days of Eminent Men. 

THE GREAT DUKE OF MARLBOROUGH AT ST. PAUl/S. 

Among the celebrated Paulines stands prominently the name 
of John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, the ablest general and 
most consummate statesman of his time. He was the second 
son of Winston Churchill, and was born at Ashe House,* in the 
parish of Musbury, adjoining Axeminster, Devonshire, in 1650. 
Part of the "antient and gentile" seat remains ; and the bed- 
stead upon which Marlborough was born is preserved in the 
neighborhood. 

"Of the education of a person afterward so illustrious," says 
Coxe, "we only know that he was brought up under the care of 
his father, who was himself a man of letters, and author of a 
political history of England, entitled Divi Britannici. He was 
also instructed in the rudiments of knowledge by a neighboring 
clergyman of great learning and piety; and from him, doubtless, 
imbibed that due sense of religion, and zealous attachment to 
the Church of England, which were never obliterated amidst the 
dissipation of a court, the cares of political business, or the 
din of arms." 

He was next removed tcf the metropolis, and placed in the 
school of St. Paul's, but for a short period. This fact is thrice 
mentioned in the Life of Dean Colet, the founder of the school, 
by Dr. Knight, who had been himself a scholar, and published 
his work soon after the death of Marlborough. He is said to 
have imbibed his passion for a military life from the reading of 
Vegetius de re Militari, which was then in the school library. 
The anecdote is thus recorded by the Rev. George North, rector 
of Colyton, in his copy of Vegetius, presented to the Bodleian 
Library by the late Mr. Gough: 

" From this very book, John Churchill, scholar of this school, afterward the celebrated 
Duke of Marlborough, first learnt the elements of the art of war, as was told to me, George 
North, on St Paul's Day, 1724-25, by an old clergyman, who said he was a cotemporary 
scholar, was then well acquainted with him, and frequently saw him read it. This I test- 
ify to be true. G. NoRTU." 

This tradition is, however, not thought very probable, Vege- 
tius being a difficult book for a boy to read at so early an age, 
particularly as we can trace no indication that Marlborough pos- 
sessed such an intimate acquaintance with the Latin tongue as 
the study of this author must have required. The restless 
curiosity of youth might, however, have prompted him to look 
into this book, which contains some amusing prints, not unlikely 
to attract his attention.! 

* A view of Ashe House forms one of the illustrations to Pulman's Book of the Axe, a 
very intelligent and agreeable companion to that far-famed stream. 

t Note to Coxe's Life, by John Wade. Bohn's Edit. 1847. 



Anecdote Biographies, 195 

Notwithstanding he remained but a short time at St. Paul's, 
he gave early indications of spirit and intelligence. He was 
appointed page of honor to the Duke of York, who asking 
Churchill what profession he preferred, and in what manner he 
should provide for him, the youth threw himself upon his knees, 
and warmly petitioned that he might be appointed to a pair of 
colors in one of those fine regiments whose discipline he had 
admired. The request w^as graciously received : the youth was 
gratified with the colors, and thus was opened to "the hand- 
some young Englishman " a career of military renown, which 
may almost be said to have commenced with his first campaign. 

MATTHEW PRIOR AT WESTMINSTER. 

This celebrated poet was born about 1666, at Wimborne Mins- 
ter, Dorset : his parents died when he was very young, and he 
was intmsted to the care of his uncle, Samuel Prior, who kept 
"the Rummer" tavern, between Whitehall and Charing Cross. 
At his uncle's charge, Matthew w^as sent to Westminster School ; 
but from his lines to Fleetwood Shepheard, the future poet assist- 
ed his uncle in his business : 

My uncle, rest his soul, when living, 

Might have contriv'd me ways of thriving ; 

Taught me with cider to replenish 

My vats, or ehbing ti'le of Uhenish. 

So when for hock I drew prickt white-wine, 

Swear't had the flavor, and was white-wine. 

Tradition relates that the boy was found in his uncle's tavern 
by the Earl of Dorset, in the act of reading Horace. The Earl 
sent the lad to St. John's College, Cambridge, where he was ad- 
mitted in 1683, and was next day appointed a scholar of that 
house, on the Duchess of Somerset's foundation, by her own 
nomination. In that year he contributed some verses to the 
academical congratulations on the marriage of the Princess 
Anne with Prince George of Denmark. In 1686, he took his 
degree of B.A., and was chosen fellow of his college; and in 
1688, he wrote the Ode to the Deity for a college exercise. In 
the same year, he and Charles Montague produced "The City 
Mouse and the Country Mouse ;" and with his associate in 
that composition. Prior left Cambridge, and came up to London 
to seek his fortune. Lafe in life hu collected his poems, which 
he published with a dedication to the Duke of Dorset, in grat- 
itude to the memory of that nobleman's father — to whose 
timely munificence he was indebted for the completion of his 
education. 



196 School-Days of Eminent Men. 

ADDISON AT LICHFIELD, CHARTER-HOUSE, AND OXFORD. 

Joseph Addison, one of our greatest writers in prose, was 
educated with great care. He was born at Milston, Wilts, 
May 1, 1672, of which place his father was rector, and a man 
of considerable learning. He sent young Joseph to the school 
of the Rev. Mr. Naish, at Ambresbury; but he was soon re- 
moved to Salisbury, under the care of Mr. Taylor; and thence 
to the grammar-school at Lichfield, in his 12th year. Dr. John- 
son relates a story of Addison being here a ringleader in a har- 
ring out ; which was told to Johnson, when he was a boy, by 
Andrew Corbett, of Shropshire, who had it from Mr. Pigot, his 
uncle, Addison's school-fellow. There is also a tradition that 
Addison ran away from school, and hid himself in a wood, where 
he fed on berries, and slept in a hollow tree, till after a long 
search he was discovered and brought home. From Lichfield, 
Addison was removed to the Charter-house, under Dr. Ellis, 
where he first became acquainted with his afterward celebrated 
friend Steele. At 15, he was not only fit for the university, but 
carried thither a classical taste and a stock of learning which 
would have done honor to a Master of Arts. He was entered 
at Queen's College, Oxford ; but, in a few months, some of his 
Latin verses falling by accident into the hands of Dr. Lancaster, 
Dean of Magdalen College, he was so pleased with their diction 
and versification, that he procured for young Addison admittance 
to Magdalen, where he resided during ten years. A warm 
admirer says: "There is no passing through the cloisters of 
Magdalen College, Oxford, without casting an eye up to the 
study-window of Mr. Addison, from whence his genius first dis- 
played itself.'* 

'•Addison was, at first, one of those scholars who are called Demies, but was subsequently 
elected a fellow. His college is still proud of his name : his portrait hangs in the hall ; 
and strangers are still told that his favorite walk was under the elms which fringe the 
meadow on the banks of the Cherwell. It is said, and is highly probable, that he was dis- 
tinguished among his fellow-students by the delicacy of liis feelings, by the dryness of his 
manners, and by the assiduity with which he often prolonged his studies far into the night. 
It is certain that his reputation for ability and learning stood high. Many years later, the 
ancient Doctors of Magdalen continued to talk in the common room of his boyish compo- 
sitions, and expressed their sorrow that no copy of exercises so remarkable had been pre- 
served." 

Lord Macaulay, from whose review of Addison's Life and 
Writings we quote the above passage, considers his knowledge 
of the Latin poets, from Lucretius and Catullus down to Claudius 
and Prudentius, to have been singularly exact and profound, but 
his knowledge of other provinces of ancient literature slight. 
"He does not appear to have attained more than an ordinary 
acquaintance with the political and moral writers of Rome, nor 
was his own Latin prose by any means equal to his Latin verse. 



Anecdote Biographies, 197 

His knowledge of Greek, though doubtless such as was, in his- 
time, thought respectable at Oxford, was evidently less than 
that which many lads now carry away every year from Eton and 
Rugby." Yet he was an accomplished scholar, and a master of 
pure English eloquence ; and a consummate painter of life and 
manners ; and in his Tatlers, Spectators, and Guardians, he laid 
the foundation of a new school of popular writing. 

DR. ISAAC WATTS HIS SCHOOLS, AND EDUCATIONAL WORKS. 

Watts has been with propriety styled a classic of the people. 
His hymns for children have exercised an influence on the minds 
of the young far beyond the Dissenting body, for whom they 
were written. His verse is generally smooth, sometimes ner- 
vous ; and the matter is ahvays judicious, sometimes touching, 
sometimes approaching to eloquence. His "Logic" was once a 
text-book at Oxford. He was an efficient promoter of charity- 
schools ; and he wrote many books of education, from the simple 
hymns for children to works upon abstract subjects. 

He was born at Southampton in 1674, where his father, who 
was a man of strong devotional feeling, and a rigid noncon- 
formist, kept a boarding-school He was imprisoned on account 
of his religion, and during his confinement his wife sat on a stone 
at the prison-door, with little Isaac, then an infant, at her 
breast. The child showed a taste for books at a very early age : 
he was taught the learned languages in the free grammar-school 
of Southampton in his fourth year. The little money he received 
in presents he spent upon books ; and his leisure hours he passed 
in reading, instead of joining the other boys at play. When 
only seven or eight years old, he composed some devotional 
pieces to please his mother. His gentle yet vivacious disposi- 
tion obtained him friends, who offigred to support him at one of 
the universities ; but having been bred a nonconformist, he 
determined to remain one. He was, therefore, sent in his six- 
teenth year to an academy in London, at that time kept by Mr. 
Thomas Rowe, minister of an Independent meeting-house at 
Haberdashers' Hall. He remained here three years, pursuing 
his studies with intemperate ardor, allowing himself no time for 
exercise, and curtailing the period usually allotted to sleep. 
He thus irremediably injured his constitution. He used to mark 
all the books he read, to abridge some of them, and annotate 
others, which were interleaved for the purpose. Dr. Johnson 
says of his classical acquirements : — " Some Latin essays, sup- 
posed to have been written as exercises at his academy, show a 
degree of knowledge, both philosophical and theological, such as 
very few attain by a much longer course of study ;" and, "in 



I 



198 School-Days of Eminent Men, 

his youth he appears to have paid attention to Latin poetry : hia 
verses to his brother in the glyconic measure, written when he 
was seventeen, are remarkably easy and elegant." He also made 
Bome proficiency in the study of Hebrew, of logic, and scholas- 
tic divinity. His acquirements in mathematical and physical 
science appear to have been inconsiderable. Mr. Rowe was 
accustomed to say that he never had occasion to reprove Watts, 
and he often held him up as a pattern to his other pupils. 

Watts returned to his father's house in 1694, and spent the 
next two years of his life in private study. Probably most of 
his juvenile works were composed during this time. No com- 
positions of the kind have obtained such extensive use as his 
Hymns and Songs for Children. Doddridge relates, in a letter 
to Watts, an affecting incident regarding one of his Hymns : 

I was preaching to a large assembly of plain country -people at a village, when, after a 
sermon from Hebrews vi. 12, we sang one of your hymns (which, if I remember right, 
■was the 140t.h of the second book), and at that part of the worship I had the satisfaction 
to observe tears in the eyes of several people ; after the service was over, some of them 
told me they were not able to sing, so deeply were their minds affected ; and the clerk, in__ 
particular, said he could hardly utter the words as he gave them out. ^m 

The Hon. Mrs. Norton thus touchingly apostrophizes the 
memory of this excellent man ; 

Oh, Watts ! gentle-hearted old man ! Did you ever foresee the universal interest which 
would link itself to your name among the innocent hearts of earth ? Did angels reveal to 
you in your death-hour, how many a dying child would murmur your pleasant hymns as 
its farewell to earth? how many living creatures repeat them as their most familiar notions 
of prayer? Did you foresee that in your native land, and wherever its language is spoken, 
the p\irer and least sintul portion of the ever-drifting generations would be trained with 
your words? And now, in that better world of glory, do the souls of young children 
crowd round you ? Do you hold sweet converse with those who, perhaps, were tirst let into 
the track of glory by the faint light which the spark of your soul left on earth ? Do they 
recognize you, the souls of our departed little ones— souls i f the children of the long ago 
dead — souls of the children of the living — lost and lamented, and then fading from mem- 
ory like sweet dreams? It may be so ; and that when the great responsible giftof author- 
ehip is accounted for, your crown will be brighter than that bestowed upon philosophers 
and sages ! 

pope's schools and self-tuition. 

Alexander Pope has been ably characterized by his latest 
biographer* to have followed closely and reverently in the foot- 
steps of Dryden, "copying his subjects, his manner and versifi- 
cation, and adding to them original powers of wit, fancy, and 
tenderness, and a brilliancy, condensation, and correctness which 
even his master did not reach, and which still remain unsur- 
passed." 

Pope was born in London, in the memorable year of the 
Revolution, 1688. His father carried on the business of a lin- 
en-merchant in Lombard-street : he was " an honest merchant, 
and dealt in Hollands wholesale," as his widow informed Mr. 

* Mr. Robert CarrutherSj in his Life of Pope. 2nd edit. 1857. 



Anecdote Biographies, 199 

Spence. The elder Pope was a Roman Catholic, and having been 
successful in business, when the Revolution endangered the lives 
and property of the sect to which he belonged, he withdrew 
from trade and the city, first to Kensington, and afterward to 
Binfield, a skirt of Windsor Forest. The Pope dwelling, a little 
low house, has been transformed into a villa ; but the poet's study 
has been preserved, with a cypress-tree on the lawn, said to have 
been planted by him. 

" From his irifincy. Pope was considered a prodigy," says Mr. Carruthers. " He ha'l 
inherited from his father a crooked body, and from his mother a sickly constitution, per- 
petually suhjecfc to severe headaches ; hence great care and tenderness were required iu his 
nurture His faithful nurse, Mary Beach, lived to see hiin a great man ; aud when she 
died, in 1725, the poet erected a stone over her grave at Twickenham, to tell that Alexan- 
der Pope, whom she nursed in infancy, and affectionately attended for twenty-eight years, 
was grateful for her services He had nearly lost his life when a child, from a wild cow, 
that threw him down, and with her horns wounded him in the throat. He charmed all 
the household by his gentleness and sensibility, and in consequence of the sweetness of his 
voice w;is called ' the Little Nightingale.' He was taught his letters by an old aunt, and 
he taught himself to wri:e by copying from printed books. This art he retained through 

life, and often practiced with singular neatness and proficiency His letters to Henry 

Cromwell (the originals of which still exist), his letters to ladies, and his inscriptions in 
books presented to his friends, are specimens of fine, clear, and scholar-like penmanship." 

In his eighth year Pope was put under the tuition of the 
family priest, who taught him the accidence and first parts of 
grammar, by adopting the measure followed in the Jesuits' 
schools of teaching the rudiments of Latin and Greek together. 
He then attended two little schools, at which he learned nothing. 
The first of these, Mr. Carruthers considers to have been the 
Roman Catholic seminary, at Twyford, on the river Loddon, 
near Binfield: here "he wrote a lampoon upon his master for 
some faults he had discovered in him, so early had he assumed 
the characters of critic and satirist !" He was flogiied for the 
offense, and his indulgent father removed him to a school kept 
by a Roman Catholic convert named Deane, who had a school, 
first, in Marylebone, and afterward at Hyde Park Corner, at 
both which places Pope was under his charge. 

'' I began writing verses of my own invention," he says, " farther back than I can well 
remember." Ogilby's translation of H-mer was one of the first large poems he read, and, 
in after-life, he spoke of the rapture it afforded him. " I was then about eight years old. 
This led me to Sandy's Ovid, which I liked extremely, and so I did a translation of a part 
of Statins by some very bad hand. AVhen I was about twelve I wrote a kind of play, 
which I got to be acted by my school-fellows. It was a number of speeches from the Iliad, 
tacked together with verses of my own." Kuffhead says, the part of Ajax was performed 
by the master's gardener. 

Deane had been a Fellow of University College, Oxford, 
deprived, declared "non socius," after the Revolution. Wood 
says : " Deane was a good tutor in the College ;" Pope, that he 
was a bad tutor out of it, for he nearly forgot under him what 
he had learnt before; since, on leaving school, he was only able, 
he says, to construe a little of Tully's Offices. 

Pope was better acquainted with Dryden than with Cicero, 



200 School-Days of Eminent Men. 

and his boyish admiration and curiosity led him to obtain a sight 
of the living poet. "I saw Mr. Dryden when I was twelve 
years of age. (This must have been in the last year of Dryden's 
life.) I remember his face well, for I looked upon him' even 
then with veneration, and observed him very particularly." Dr. 
Johnson finely remarks : " Who does not wish that Dryden could 
have known the value of the homage that Avas paid him, and 
foreseen the greatness of his young admirer ?" 

" My next period," says Pope, " was in Windsor Forest, where I sat down with an earn- 
est desire of reading, and applied as constantly as I could to it for some years. I was 
between twelve and thirteen when I went thither, and I continued in close pursuit of 
pleasure and languages till nineteen or twenty, Ornsidering- how very little I had when I 
came from school, I think I may be said to have taught myself Latin as well as French or 
Greek, and in all these my chief way of getting them was by translation," He afterward 
said of himself, 

Bred up at home, full early I begun 

To read in Greek the wrath of Peleus's son. 

This scheme of self-instruction in the language of Homer did 
not, however, perfectly succeed ; and we agree with Mr. Car- 
ruthers, that Pope's "case may be held to support the argument 
in favor of public schools ; but at the same time it affords an 
animating example to the young student who has been denied 
the inestimable advantage of early academical training and dis- 
ciplme. 

To vary the studies. Pope's father used to set him to make 
verses, and he often sent him back to "new turn" them, as they 
were not "good rhymes." The pupil, however, soon shot ahead 
of his master. His Ode on Solitude was written before the age 
of twelve, his satirical piece on Elkanah Settle at the age of 
fourteen; and some of his translations, of nearly the same 
period, are skillfully polished in versification. "Pope as a ver- 
sifier was never a boy," says Mr. Carruthers : " he was born to 
refine our numbers, and to add the charm of finished elegance 
to our poetical literature, and he was ready for his mission "at an 
age when most embryo poets are laboring at syntax, or strug- 
gling for expression." 

AValler, Spenser, and Dryden were Pope's favorite poets, and 
when a boy, he said he could distinguish the difference between 
softness and sweetness in their versification. The Eclogues of 
Virgil he thought the sweetest poems in the world. Pope tells 
us that a little after he was twelve he began an epic poem, 
Alexander, Prince of Rhodes, which occupied him two years : 
the aim was to collect all the beauties of the great epic poets in 
one piece ; he wrote four books toward it, of about a thousand 
verses each, and had the copy by him till he burnt it. His next 
work was his Pastorals ; and about this time he translated above 
a quarter of the Metamorphoses, part of Statius, and Tally's 



^1 



Anecdote Biographies. 201 

piece De Senectute. Such were the early tastes and indefatiga- 
ble application of Pope. None of his juvenile poems, however, 
were published before he was in his twentieth year ; and they 
are thought to have been first carefully corrected. 

Pope has himself told us thut he '^lisp'd in numbers." The 
Ode to Solitude, he said, in a letter to Cromwell, was written 
when he was not twelve years old. Dodslcy, however, who was 
intimate with and indebted to Pope, mentioned that he had seen 
several pieces of an earlier date, — and it is possible that the 
following may have been one of them, although, according to 
the literal interpretation of the words of the poet prefixed, it 
must rank the second of his known works. The copy before us 
is in that beautiful print hand, with copying which Pope all his 
life occasionally amused himself.* 

A 

* PARAPHRASE on 

Thomas a Kcmpis ; L. 3, C. 2. 
Done by the Author at 12 years old. 

SPEAK, Gracious Lord, oh speak : thy Servant hears : 

For I'm thy Servant, and I'll still be so : 
Speak words of Comibrt in my willing Ears ; 

And since my Tongue is in thy praises slow, 
And since that thine all Khetorick exceeds ; 
Speak thou in words, but let me speak in deeds ! 

Nor speak alone, but give me grace to hear 

What thy coelestial sweetness does impart ; 
Let it not stop when entred at the Ear 

But sink, and take deep rooting in my heart. 
As the parch'd Earth drinks Kaiu(but grace afford) 
With such a Gust will I receive thy word. 

Nor with the Israelites shall I desire 

Thy heav'nly word by Moses to receive, 
Lest I should die ; but Thou who didst inspire 

Moses himself, speak thou, that I may live. 
Rather with Samuel I beseech with tears 
Speak, gracious Lord, oh speak ; thy Servant hears. 

, Moses indeed may say the words, but Thou 

Must give the Spirit, and the Life inspire 
Our Love to thee his fervent Breath may blow, 

But 'tis thyself alone can give the fire ; 
Thou without them may'st speak and profit too ; 
But without thee, what could the Prophets do? 

They preach the Doctrine, but thou mak'st us do 't ; ] 

Thej' teach the misteries thou dost open lay ; 
The trees they water, but thou giv'st the fruit ; 

They to Salvation show the arduous way. 
But none but you can give us Strength to walk ; 
You give the Practise, they but give the Talk. 

Let them be Silent then ; and thou alone 

(My God) speak comfort to my ravish'd ears ; 
Light of my eyes, my Consolation, 

Speak when thou wilt, for still thy Servant hears. 
What-ere thou speak'st, let this be understood : 
Thy greater Glory, and my greater Good I 

♦From the Athenseum, No. 1394. 



202 School-Bays of Eminent Men, 

JOHN GAY AT BARNSTAPLE. 

This lively poet, who=e charmino: Fables are the best we 
possess, was descended from an old Devonshire family, and was 
born at Barnstaple, in 1 688, as proved by some MS. found in the 
secret drawer of an arm-chair which once belonged to the poet. 
He was educated at the ji:rammar-school of his native town, and 
had for his master one Mr. Luck, who probably fostered though 
he could not create in his pupil a taste for poetry, by a volume j 
of Latin and English poems, which he published before he retired 
from the mastership of the school. When Gay quitted it, his 
father being in reduced circumstances, the young poet was bound 
apprentice to a silk-mercer in the Strand, London ; but he dis- 
liked this employment, and obtained his discharge from his 
master. His joy at this change may be traced in the following 
passage from his Rural Sports^ which he, in 1711, dedicated to 
Mr. Pope, and thus established an acquaintance which ripened 
into a lasting friendship : 

But I, who ne'er was blessed by Fortune's hand, 
Nor brightened ploughshares in paternal land; 
Long in the noisy town have been immured, 
Kespired its smoke, and all its cares endured. 
Fatigued at last, a calm retreat I chose. 
And soothed my harassed mind with sweet repose, ' 
AVhere fjelds, and shades, and the refreshing clime, 
Inspire the sylvan song, and prompt my rhyme. 

Gay's Fables,* written in 1726, were designed for the special 
improvement of the young Duke of Cumberland ; but the poet 
was meanly rewarded, and his fable of The Hare with many 
Friends is, doubtless, drawn from Gay's own experience. He 
was equally beloved by Swift and Pope : the former called Gay 
his "dear friend.;" and the latter characterized him as — 

Of manners gentle, of affections mild, 
In wit a man, simplicity a child. 

HOVT EDMUND STONE TAUGHT HIMSELF MATHEMATICS. 

Stone was born about the year 1700 ; his father was gardener 
to the Duke of Argyle, who, walking one day in his garden, 
observed a Latin copy of Newton's Principia lying on the grass, 
and thinking it had been brought from his own library, called 
some one to carry it back to its place. Upon this, Stone, who 
was then in his eighteenth year, claimed the book as his own. 
"Yours!" replied the Duke; "do you understand geometry, 
Latin, and Newton ?" " I know a little of them," replied the 

* The Fables of Gay were beautifully illustrated by William Harvey, in 1854, and pub- 
lished with a Memoir and Notes bv Qctavius Freire Owen. M.A., F.S.A. 




Anecdote Biographies, 203 

young man. The Duke was surprised ; and, having a taste for 
the sciences, conversed with the young mathematician, and was 
astonished at the force, the accuracy, and the candor of his 
answers. "But how," said the Duke, "came you by the knowl- 
edge of all these things?" Stone replied: "A servant taught 
me ten years since to read. Does one need to know anything 
more than tlie twenty-four letters in order to learn everything 
else that one wishes ?" The Duke's curiosity redoubled : he sat 
down on a bank, and requested a detail of the whole process by 
which he had become so learned. 

"I first learned to read," said Stone ; "the masons were ihen 
at work upon your house. I approached them one day, and 
observed that the architect used a rule and compasses, and that 
he made calculations. I inquired what might be the meaning 
and the use of these things, and I was informed that there was 
a science called arithmetic. I purchased a book of arithmetic, 
and I learned it. I was told there was another science called 
geometry ; I bought the necessary books and I learned geometry. 
By reading, I found that there were good books of these two 
sciences in Latin ; I bought a dictionary, and I learned Latin. 
I understood also that there were good books of the same kind 
in French \, I bought a dictionary, and I learned French. And 
this, my Lord, is what I have done : it seems to me that we may 
learn everything when we know the twenty-four letters of the 
alphabet." 

Under the patronage of the Duke of Argyle, Stone, some 
years afterward, published in London a Treatise on Mathemat- 
ical Instruments, and a Mathematical Dictionary, was chosen 
a Fellow of the Royal Society, and became a distinguished man 
of science. 

JOHN WESLEY AT THE CHARTER-HOUSE AND OXFORD. 

The founder of the Methodists, John Wesley, was the second, 
or the second who grew up to manhood, of the sons of the Rev. 
Samuel Wesley, of Epworth, Lincolnshire, and was born there 
in (0. S.) 1703.* When in his sixth year, he nearly lost his 
life in a fire wdiich consumed his father's parsonage ; and John 
remembered this providential deliverance through life with the 

* Samuel, the eldest son, was first under-master of Westminster School afterward head 
of a fn'e-scUool at Tiverton. The third son, Charles, was at Westminster School, when an 
Irish gentleman, Garrett Wellesly (or Wesley), Esq., of Dunganon, M.P., considering the 
boy of his own family, offered to make him his heir if he would consent to go with him to 
Ireland. The young man, who was just cho.~en student of Christchurch from Westmins- 
ter School, preferred his projects there to a life of dependence on a stranger ; and the fiivor 
of his namesake was in con.«equence transferred, and his fortune bequethed, to Kichard, 
second son of Sir Henry CoUey, who assumed the name of Wellesley, was afterward Earl of 
MorningDon, and was grandfather of the Marquis Wellesley and the Duke of Weliiugtoa. 



204 Sclwol-Days of Eminent Men. 

deepest jxratitude. In reference to it, lie luul ji honse in flames 
engraved as an emblem under one of his ])ort raits, Avitli these 
words for the motto, "Is not this a brand phicked out of the 
burning?" Peculiar care Avas taken of his religious education 
by his mother, which, with the habitual and fervent })iety of both 
his parents, and his omu surprising jjreservation, at an age when 
he was perfectly capable of remembering all the circumstances, 
combined to foster in the child that disposition which afterward 
developed itself with such force, and produced such important 
effects. 

At an early age John was sent to the Charter-house, where he 
suffered under the tyranny which the elder boys Avere ])ermitted 
to exercise. The boys of the higher forms were then in the 
practice of taking their portion of meat from the younger ones, 
by the law of the strongest; and during great part of the time 
that Wesley remained there, a small daily portion of bread was 
his only food. He strictly performed an injunction of his father's, 
that he should run round the Charter-house green three times 
every morning. Here, for his quietness, regularity, and applica- 
tion lie became a favorite with the master. Dr. Walker ; and 
through life he retained so great a predilection for the place, 
that on his annual visit to London, he made it a custom to walk 
througli the scene of his boyhood. 

At the age of seventeen, Wesley proceeded to Christchurch, 
Oxford.^ He had previously acquired some knowledge of Hebrew 
under his brother Samuel's tuition. At college he continued his 
studies with all diligence, and Avas noticed there for his attain- 
ments, and especially for his skill in logic ; no man, indeed, Avas 
ever more dextrous in the art of reasoning. He Avas no inex- 
pert versifier, and at one time seemed likely to have found his 
vent in poetry. When he Avas an under-graduate, his manners 
were free and cheerful; and his active disposition displayed it- 
self in Avit and vivacity. As, hoAvever, he was destined by the 
wishes of his family, and the situation which he held in the uni- 
versity, to become a candidate for orders, his parents directed 
his attention to the studies Avhich concerned his profession, and 
more particularly to books of a devotional spirit. Among the 
Avorks Avhich he read in this preparation Avere the famous treatise 
De Tmitaiione Chn'sti, ascribed to Thomas a Kempis; but the 
impression Avhich this Avriter failed to make, Avas produced by 
the work of a far more poAverful intellect, and an imagination 
infinitely more fervent— Jeremy Taylor's Rules of Holy Living 
and Dying, Wesley now got rid of all his acquaintances whose 
conversation he did not think likely to promote his spiritual im- 
provement. In 1725, he Avas ordained; and in the following- 
spring was elected to a fellowship at Lincoln College. *^ 



Anecdote Bior/raphies, 205 

P^rom this time Wesley began to keep a diary, in which he 
wjnveys a lively pieture of hiniself; registering not only his pro- 
ceedings, but his thouglits, his Btudien, and his remarks u|>on 
men and bookp, and raiKcellaneous Bubjects, with a vivacity 
which characterized him to the last. He was next apppointed 
jModeralor of the Logical JJisputations and Greek J>eclurer. 
lie now formed for himself a scheme of studies: Mondays and 
Tue-days were allotted for the classi(;s ; Wednesdays to logic 
and ethics ; Thursdays to Hebrew and Arabic; Fridays to meta- 
physics and natural philosophy; Saturdays to oratory and poetry, 
but chiefly to composition in those arts; and the Sabbath to di- 
vinity. Jt appears by Iiis diary, also, tiiat he gave great atten- 
tion to mathematics. Full of business as he now was, he found 
time for writing by rising an hour earlier in the morning, and going 
into company an hour later in tiie evenirjg. At the desire of 
his fathef, he next resided at Wroote, one of his livings; he 
olHciated there for two years as his curate, and obtained jiriests' 
orders. 

He now returned to take up his abode at Lincoln College, 
became a tutor there, and presided as Moderator at the Disjiuta- 
tions. At this time a decided color was given to Wesley's des- 
tiny, and the foundation laid of Methodism. During his absence 
at Wroote, his younger brother, Charles, had drawn together in 
Oxford a small society of young men, of similar views, who re- 
ceived the sacrament weekly at St. Mary's, and assembled daily 
in each other's rooms-, for the puqjose of prayer and study. 
John was invited to join their party, and his sup(^rior age, 
though he too was \evy young, together with his station in the 
University, his character for learning, and above all, his being 
in priests' orders, combined to give him the direction of the little 
brotherhood. Nothing was further from his thoughts, or theirs, 
than the idea of separation from the fhurch: they were, indeed, 
(x>mpletely high cliurch in their principles and j>ractice. John 
Wesley added a remarkable plainness of dress, and an unusual 
manner of wearing his long flaxen hair ; and the name of 
!Methodists (a term not taken, as is generally supposed, from 
the ancient school of physicians so called, but from a religious 
sect among the puritans of the seventeenth century) was the 
least offensive term applied to them. They were in no way 
molested by the public authorities,. either of the University or 
the Church of England: but their character for unusual piety 
Cf^nciliated the good-will of their ecclesiastical superiors till some 
of them excited opposition by doctrines decidedly at variance 
with the prevailing opinions of the church. 

We have now sketched the school and college life of John 



206 School-Days of Eminent Men. * 

Wesley, unquestionably a man of very eminent talents and ac- 
quirements. 

His genius, naturally clear anrl vivid, had been developed and matured during his resi- 
dence at Oxford, by an unremitting attention to the studits af the place. His industry 
and management of time f^w have equaled. He always rose, for above fifty years together, 
at four in the morning He read even while on horseback ; and during the latter part of 
his life, when his long journeys were made in a carriage, he boasted that he had generally 
from ten to twelve hours in the day which he could devote to study and compo?i!^ion Ac- 
cordingly, besides the ancient languages, he was competently skilled in many of the tongues 
of modern Europe, and his journals display througliout a remarkable and increasing 
familiaiity with the general reading, the poetry, and the ephemeral productions of his day. 
— Abridged from the Quarterly Review^ No. 47- 

LORD MANSFIELD AT WESTMINSTER. 

" Of all the illustrious characters " (says the Queen's Scholors* 
List) "who have received their education at Westminster, there 
is perhaps none that holds out a brighter example for the imita- 
tion of youth than the accomplished lawyer and statesman, Wil- 
liam Murray." He was born at Perth in 1704; at the age of 
three, was removed to London; and in 1719, was admitted a 
King's Scholar at Westminster. Here he distinguished himself, 
not so much in his poetry as in his other exercises, especially in 
his declamation, prognosticating that eloquence which was 
matured at the bar, and in both Houses of Parliament. Pie was 
elected to Oxford in 1723, and had taken his degree of B.A. in 
1727, when he wrote a poem on the Death of George I. and 
Accession of George II., which won his first prize given on the 
occasion. He took his degree of M.A. in 1730, and in the fol- 
lowing year was called to the bar by the Society of Lincoln's 
Inn, of which he had been a student since 1724. In early life 
he associated much with "the men of wit about town." Dr. 
Johnson said of him that " when he first came to town, he drank 
champagne with the wits." He was intimate with Pope : 

" How sweet an Ovid, Murray was our boast." 

Dunciad, iv. 169. 

As a lawyer, he was self-taught, and had never gone through 
the process of a special pleader's or conveyancer's ofiice. He 
studied oratory, as well at Oxford as in debating-clubs in Lon- 
don. Pope, in the Epistle dedicated to him, says : 

" Grac'd as thou art with all the power of words, 
So known, so honor'd, in the hou.se of Lords." 

Lord Mansfield's attachment to Westminster continued 
through life ; and as long as his strength would permit him, he 
attended regularly the plays and annual meetings, which have 
for so many years been venerated customs of the school. At 
the Election dinner of 1793, his death was feelingly lamented, 
in some elegant verses written by Dean Vincent, and spoken by 
the Captain, Dr. Kidd. 



Anecdote Biographies, 207 



LORD CHATHAM AT ETON AND OXFORD. 

This illustrious statesman was born in Westminster, in 1708. 
He was sent early to Eton, where his higli qualities were soon 
discerned by the head-master, Dr. Bland ; and be there became 
eminent among a group, every member of which in manhood 
acquired celebrity. Giorge (afterward Lord) Lyttleton, Henry 
Fox (afterward Lord Holland), Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, 
Henry Fielding, Charles Pratt (afterward Lord Camden), were 
among Pitt's young friends and competitors at Eton. His bi- 
ographer, Thackeray, justly remarks, that "among the many 
recommendations which will always attach to a public system of 
education, the value of early emulation, the force of example, 
the abandonment of sulky and selfish habits, and the acquire- 
ment of generous, manly dispositions, are not to be overlooked. 
All these I believe to have had weight in forming the character 
of Lord Chatham."* 

Pitt's studies were not neglected during his school vacations ; 
for his father provided for him an able tutor at home during 
these periods, and himself assisted in this continuous tuition. 
The late Lord Stanhope stated that " Pitt being asked to what 
he principally ascribed the two qualities for which his eloquence 
was most conspicuous, namely, the lucid order of his reasonings, 
and the ready choice of his words, answered, that he believed he 
owed the former to an early study of the Aristotelian logic, and 
the latter to his father's practice in making him every day, after 
reading over to himself some passage in the classics, translate it 
aloud and continuously into English prose." That he cultivated 
Latin versification early is attested by the Latin hexameters on 
the Death of George the First, which he wrote in the first year 
after he was admitted a gentleman commoner at Trinity College, 
Oxford, in 1726. He was a most assiduous student of the 
classics: Demosthenes was his favorite; and he appears to have 
strongly recommended for the studies of his second son, after- 
ward the celebrated minister, the first book of Thucydides and 
Polybius. 

Lord Chatham's studies in youth were not exclusively the 
classics of antiquity. He read diligently the best English authors 
for style ; his memory was excellent, and he is said to have 
known some of Dr. Barrow's sermons by heart. 

DR. JOHNSON AT LICHFIELD, STOURBRIDGE, AND OXFORD. 

Lichfield, in Staffordshire, is scarcely less proud of Samuel 
Johnson, than is Stratford-upon-Avon, in AVarwickshire, of 

* Greasy's Eminent Etonians, p. 212. 



208 School-Days of Eminent Men, 

Shakspeare. In each town is shown the natal home and school 
of its genius; and though Johnson rests not, like Shakspeare, in 
the church of his birthplace, the people of Lichfield have testi- 
fied their veneration of their illustrious townsman bj his statue, 
while Stratford boasts of no such memorial of its master-mind. 

Samuel Johnson was born in 1709. His father was a book- 
seller and stationer, and lived in a house in the market-place at 
Lichfield, which remains to this day. Johnson's mother was a 
woman of superior understanding and much piety, to which are 
ascribed the early impressions of religion which were made 
upon the mind of her son. When he was a child in petticoats, 
and had learned to read, Mrs. Johnson one morning put the 
Common Prayer-book into his hands, pointed to the collect for 
the day, and said, " Sam, you must get this by heart." She 
went up-stairs, but by the time she had reached the second floor, 
she heard him following her. "What's the matter?" said she. 
" I can say it," he replied, and repeated it distinctly, though he 
could not have read it more than twice. 

Samuel was afflicted with the scrofula, or king's evil; and his 
mother, by advice of a physician in Lichfield, took the child to 
London in the Lent of 1712, to be touched by Queen Anne, but 
the ceremony was ineffectual. Johnson was then only thirty 
months old ; but he used to relate in after years, that they went 
in a stage-coach, and returned in a wagon; and that the queen 
wore diamonds and a long black hood. 

He first learned to read of his mother, and her old maid 
Catharine, in whose lap he well remembered sitting, to hear the 
story of St. George and the Dragon. Dame Oliver, a widow, 
who kept a school for little children in Lichfield, was his next 
teacher, and said he was the best scholar she ever had. His 
next instructor in English was one "Tom Brown," who pub- 
lished a spelling-book, and dedicated it to "the Universe." At 
the age of ten, he began to learn Latin with Mr. Hawkins, un- 
der-master of Lichfield grammar-school; in two years Johnson 
rose to be under the care of Mr. Hunter, the head-master, who, 
he relates, was " wrongheaded and severe," and used to beat 
the boys unmercifully, to save them, as he said, from the gal- 
lows ; but Johnson was sensible that he owed much to this gen- 
tleman, and invariably expressed his approbation of enforcing 
instruction by the rod. Under Mr. Hunter, Johnson made good 
progress; he seemed to learn (says one of his school-fellows) by 
intuition ; for though indolence and procrastination were in- 
herent in his constitution, whenever he made an exertion he did 
more than any one else ; and he was never corrected at school, 
but for talking and diverting other boys from their business. 



Anecdote Biographies, 209 

His favorites received very liberal assistance from him; and 
three of his juvenile associates used to cooie in the morninsr, and 
carry him to school. One in the middle stooped, while Johnson 
sat upon his back, and one on each side supported him ; and 
thus he was borne triumphant. At school he was uncommonly 
inquisitive ; and he never forgot anything that he had either 
heard or read. In consequence of his defective sight, he did not 
join the other boys in their amusements. His only diversion 
was in winter, when he was fond of being drawn upon the ice by 
one of his companions barefooted, who pulled him along by a 
garter tied round his middle; no very easy operation, as he was 
remarkably large. 

Dr. Percy, editor of the ReUques of Ancient Poetry, relates 
that Johnson, at this period, was immoderately fond of reading 
romances of chivalry ; and he attributed to such extrava^-ant 
fictions that unsettled turn of mind which prevented his ever 
fixing in any profession. From his earliest years he loved 
poetry, but hardly ever read any poem to the end ; he perused 
Shakspeare at a period so early, that the speech of the ghost in 
^Hamlet terrified him when alone. One day, imagining that his 
brother had hid some apples behind a large folio in his father's 
shop, Samuel climbed up to search for them: there were no ap- 
ples ; but the large folio proved to be Petrarch, whom he had 
seen mentioned in some preface as one of the restorers of learn- 
ing: his curiosity was excited — he sat down, and read a great 
part of the book. 

Johnson was next removed to the school of Stourbridge, Wor- 
cestershire, where he did not derive much benefit, but acted as 
an assistant to the master, in teaching the younger boys. He 
subsequently discriminated his progress at the two grammar- 
schools thus : " at one I learned much in the school, but little 
from the master; in the other I learned much from the master, 
but little in the school." At Stourbridge he was admitted into 
the best company of the place ; he remained little more than a 
year, and then returned home, to learn his father's business ; 
but he lacked application. He, however, read much in a desul- 
tory way, as he afterward told Boswell, his biographer : " all 
literature, sir; all ancient writers, all manly; though but little 
Greek, only some Anacreon and Hesiod; but in this irregular 
manner I had looked into a great many books which were not 
commonly known at the universities, where they seldom read any 
books but what are put into their hands by their tutors ; so that 
when I came to Oxford, Dr. Adams, now Master of Pembroke 
College, told me I was the best qualified for the University he 
had ever known come there." 
14 



210 School-Days of Eminent Men. 

Johnson had already given several proofs of his poetical 
genius, both in his school exercises and other occasional compo- 
sitions, of which Boswell quotes specimens. 

In 1728, Johnson, beino: then in his nineteenth year, was en- 
tered as a commoner at Pembroke College : his father accom- 
panied him, and introduced him to his tutor as a good scholar, 
and a poet who wrote Latin verses; Johnson behaved modestly, 
and sat silent; till, upon something which occurred in the course 
of conversation, he suddenly struck in, and quoted Macrobius ; 
and thus he gave the first impression of that more extensive 
reading in which he had indulged himself. Johnson describes 
his tutor as " a very worthy man, but a very heavy man." Up- 
on occasion of being fined for non-attendance, he said to the 
tutor, " Sir, you have scored me twopence for non-attendance at 
a lecture not worth a penny." Nevertheless, Johnson attended 
his tutor's lectures, and also the lectures in the college, very 
regularly. At his request he translated Pope's Messiah into 
Latin verse, as a Christmas exercise, with uncommon rapidity 
and ability; and it obtained for him not only the applause of 
his college and university, but of Pope himself, who is said to 
have remarked: "The writer of this poem will leave it a ques- 
tion with posterity, whether his or mi»ie be the original." 

Johnson's line of reading at Oxford, and during the vacations, 
cannot be traced. He told Boswell that what he read solidly 
at the university was Greek ; not the Grecian historians, but 
Homer and Euripides, and now and then a little epigram ; that 
the study of which he was most fond was metaphysics, but that 
he had not read much even in that way. It is, however, certain, 
both from his writings and ccynversation, his reading was very 
extensive. He appears, at various times, to have planned a 
methodical course of study. Like Soutiiey, he had a peculiar 
faculty in seizing at once what was valuable in any book, with- 
out reading it through. He wrote at all times impatiently and 
in a hurry : he wrote his first exercise at college twice over, but 
never took that trouble with any other composition, and his best 
works were "struck off in a heat with rapid exertion." From 
bis being short-sighted, writing was inconvenient to him ; there- 
fore, he never committed a foul draft to paper, but revolved the 
subject in his mind, and turned and formed every period, till he 
had brought the whole to the highest correctness and the most 
perfect arrangement — when he wrote it ; and his uncommoily 
retentive memory enabled him to deliver a whole essay, properly 
finished, whenever it was called for. 

Johnson was a great favorite with his college companions; 
and he might often be seen lounging at the gate of Pembroke 



Anecdote Biographies, 211 

Colleo:e amidst a circle of students, whom he was entertaining 
witii his wit, and keeping from their studies, if not spiriting them 
to rebellion against the college discipline. The secret of this 
seeming levity and insubordination will be stated best in John- 
son's own words : " I was mad and violent. It was bitterness 
which they mistook for frolic. I was miserably poor, and I 
thought to fight my way by my literature and my wit ; so I dis- 
regarded all power and all authority." Johnson did not form 
any close intimacies with his fellow-collegians, though he loved 
Pembroke to the last. He boasted of the many eminent men 
who had been educated there, and how many poets had been 
Pembroke men, adding, " Sir, we were a nest of singing birds." 
But, Johnson's university education, through his scanty supply 
of funds from home, and the shortcomings of a friend, was left 
uncompleted ; and he personally left college without a degree, 
December 12, 1729, though his na7?ie remained on the books till 
October 8, 1731. 

Whatever instruction Johnson received from his mother in 
the doctrines and duties of Christ'anity, does not appear to have 
been followed up; and it was not until his going to Oxford that 
he became a sincerely pious man. When at the University, he 
took up the Nonjuror Law's Serious Call to a Holy Life, and 
was so affected and convinced by its contents, that from this 
time religion was the predominant object of his thoughts and 
affections. 

But he returned to Lichfield from the University with gloomy 
prospects. In 1731, he made an unsuccessful effort to procure 
the appointment of usher in the grammar-school of Stourbridge, 
where he had been partly educated. In the summer follow- 
ing he obtained a situation in the school of Market Bosworth, 
Leicestershire, to which he went on foot: the employment was, 
however, irksome to him, and he soon quitted it. Soon after 
this he went to Birmingham, and undertook, for the first book- 
seller established there, a translation and abridgment of a Voyage 
to Abyssinia, by Lobo, a Portuguese Jesuit, for which he received 
five guineas! 

Johnson now returned to Lichfield, and in 1736 married Mrs. 
Porter, a widow, with whom he opened a private academy at 
Edial Hall, near Lichfield; but the establishment did not suc- 
ceed ; he had only three pupils, two of whom w^ere David Gar- 
rick and his brother. Meanwhile he was storing his mind, and 
employed on his tragedy of Irene. Next year, accompanied by 
Garrick, he repaired to London, to try his fortune in "that great 
field of genius and exertion." 

At Lichfield, the house in which Johnson was born is inces- 



212^ School-Days of Eminent Men. 



n 



saiitly visited by pilgrims from all parts of the world. Opposite 
is the statue of the Doctor, its pedestal sculptured with bass- 
reliefs of incidents in his life ; and near a footpath in the town 
is a willow, from a shoot of the tree planted by Johnson's hands. 
These are trifling memorials compared with the works which his 
genius, learning, and understanding produced in the service of 
religion and virtue, and which have led even his most grudging 
critic to pronounce Johnson to have been " both a great and a 
good man." 

HOW JAMES FERGUSON TAUGHT HIMSELF THE CLASSICS AND 

ASTIIONOMY. 

Ferguson has been characterized as literally his own instruc- 
tor in the very elements of knowledge ; without the assistance 
either of books or a living teacher. He was born in 1710, in 
Banffshire, where his father was a day-laborer, but religious and 
honest. He taught his children to read and write, as they 
reached the proper age ; but James was too impatient to wait 
till his regular turn came, and after listening to his father teach- 
ing his elder brother, he would get hold of the book, and try 
hard to master the lesson which he had thus heard gone over ; 
and, ashamed to let his father know what he was about, he used 
to apply to an old woman to solve his difficulties. In this way 
he learned to read tolerably well before his father suspected that 
he knew his letters. 

When about seven or eight years of age, Ferguson, seeing that 
to raise the fallen roof of his cottage, his father applied to it a 
beam, resting on a prop, in the manner of a lever, the young 
philosopher, by experiment with models which he made by a 
simple turning-lathe and a little knife, actually discovered two 
of the most important elementary truths in mechanics — the 
lever, and the wheel and axle ; and he afterward hit upon other 
discoveries, without either book or teacher to assist him. While 
tending sheep in the fields, he used to make models of mills, 
spinning-wheels, etc.; and at night, he used to lie down on his 
back in the fields, observing the heavenly bodies. "I used to 
stretch," says he, "a thread with small beads on it, at arms- 
length, between my eye and the stars ; sliding the beads upon it 
till they hid such and such stars from my eye, in order to take 
their apparent distances from one another ; and then laying the 
thread down on a paper, I marked the stars thereon by the 
beads." His master encouraged him in these and similar pur- 
suits; and, says Ferguson, "often took the threshing flail out of 
my hands and worked himself, while I sat by him in the barn, 
busy with my compasses, ruler, and pen." He also tells us how 



1 



Anecdote Biographies. 213 

he made an artificial globe from a description in Gordon's Geo- 
graphical Grammar; a wooden clock, wiih the neck of a broken 
bottle for the bell ; and a timepiece or watch, moved bj a spring 
of whalebone. After many years he came to London, became 
a popular lecturer on astronomy, and had George III., then a 
boy, among his auditors: Ferguson was elected a Fellow of the 
Royal Society, and wrote severa( works valuable for the simplic- 
ity and ingenuity of their elucidations. 

LORD CAMDEN AT ETON AND CAMBRIDGE. 

Charles Pratt, Lord Camden, the profound jurist and enlight- 
ened statesman, was born of good family, in 1714, at Colhamp- 
ton, in Devonshire. His father. Sir John Pratt, Chief Justice 
of the King's Bench, in George the First's reign, died when his 
son Charles was ten years old ; soon after, he was sent to Eton, 
and elected on the foundation". He pursued his classical studies 
with great diligence. Here he was a bosom friend of William 
Pitt, afterward Earl of Chatham : this friendship did not cease 
with their college days, for Pratt owed to Pitt his first legal pro- 
motion, his introduction to political life, and his Chancellorship ; 
and in return. Lord Camden proved "a tower of strength" to 
Chatham in his constitutional campaigns. 

Pratt left Eton for King's College, Cambridge, in 1731 : here 
"he read with genius;" his favorite authors being Livy and 
Claudian. He had been, when a little child, destined by his 
father for the bar ; he had entered at the Liner Temple before 
he went to Cambridge ; and at the university, as the best basis 
for legal excellence, he studied the English history and constitu- 
tion, the science of jurisprudence, and the masterpieces of Greece 
and Rome. Having taken his degree, in 1735, he left Cam- 
bridge for London, and was called to the bar in 1738. 

SHENSTONe's " SCHOOLMISTRESS." 

William Shenstone, "the poet of the Leasowes," was born 
upon that estate, at Hales-Owen, Shropshire, in 1714. He 
learned to read at what is termed a dame-school, and his vene- 
rable teacher has been immortalized in his poem of " The School- 
mistress." He soon received such delight from books, that he 
was always calling for fresh entertainment, and expected that 
when any of the family w^ent to market, a new book should be 
brought to him, which, when it came, was in fondness carried to 
bed, and laid by him. It is related that when his request had 
been neglected, his mother wrapped up a piece of wood of the 
same form, and pacified him for the night. As he grew older, he 
went for a time to the grammar-school at Hales-Owen, and was 



214 School-Bays of Eminent Men, 

afterward placed with an eminent schoolmaster at Solihull, 
where he distinguished himself by the quickness of his progress. 
He was next sent to Pembroke College, Oxford, where he con- 
tinued his name in the book ten years, but took no degree. At 
Oxford, in 1737, he published his first work, a small poetical 
miscellany, without his name. In 1740, appeared his Judgment 
of Hercules ; and in two years afterward his pleasing poem, in 
the stanza of Spenser, entitled the Schoolmistress, "so delight- 
fully quaint and ludicrous, yet true to nature, that it has all the 
force and vividness of a painting by Teniers or "Wilkie." The 
cottage of the dame was long preserved as a picturesque memo- 
rial of the poet. How vividly has he portrayed the teacher of a 
bygone age in these stanzas ! 

In every village marked with little spire, 
Embowered in trees, and hardly known to fame, 
There dwells in lowly shed and mean attire, 
A matron old, whom we schoolmistress name; 
Who boasts unruly brats with birch to tame : 
They grievous Pore, in piteous durance pent, 
Awed by the power of this relentless dame ; 
And ofttimes on vagaries idly bent. 
For unkempt hair, or task unconned, are sorely shent. 

And all in sight doth rise a birchen tree, 
AVhich learning near her little dome did stowe ; 
Whilom a twig of small regard to see. 
Though now so wide its waving branches flow, 
And work the si nple vassals mickle wo ; 
For not a wind might curl the leaves that blew. 
But their limbs shuddered, and their pulse beat low; 
And as they looked, they found their horror grew, 
And shaped it into rods, and tingled at the view. 

Near to this dome is found a patch so green, 
On which the tribe their gambols do display ; 
And at the door impri.souing board is seen. 
Lest weakly wights of i-maller size should stray ; 
Eager, perdie, to bask in sunny day I 
The noises intermixed, which thence resound, 
Do learning's little tenement betray ; 
Where sits the dame disguised in look profound, 
And eyes her fairy throng, and turns her wheel around. 

Her cap far whiter than the driven snow. 
Emblem right meet of decency does yield : 
Her apron, dyed in grain, as blue, I trow, 
As is the harebell that adorns the field ; 
And, in her hand, for sceptre, she does wield 
Tway birchen sprays ; with anxious fear entwined, 
With dark distrust, and sad repentance filled ; 
And steadfast hate, and sharp affliction joined, 
And fury uncontrolled, and chastisement unkind. 
****«♦* 

Yet, nursed with skill, what dazzling fruits appear I 
Even now sagacious foresight points to show 
A little bench of headless bishops here, 
And there a chancellor in embryo, 
Or bard sublime, if bard may e'er be so. 
As Milton, Shakspeare, — names that ne'er shall die I 
Though now he crawl along the ground so low. 
Nor weeting how the Muse should soar so high, 
Wisheth, poor starveling elf, his paper kite may By.* 

* This stanza is thought to have suggested to Gray the fine reflection in his Elegy — 
" Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest," etc. 



Anecdote Biographies. 215 

Shenstone wrote also some graceful letters and essays ; and 
showed much taste in embellishing the Leasowes. He died, 
here, in the prime of life, in 1763. 

GRAY AT ETON AND CAMBRIDGE. 

Thomas Gray, of all English poets, the most finished artist, 
was born in Cornhill, in 1716, and was the only one of twelve 
children who survived the period of infancy. His father was a 
money-scrivener, and of harsh and violent disposition, whose 
wife was forced to separate from him ; and to the exertions of 
this excellent woman, as partner with her sister in a millinery 
business, the poet owed the advantages of a learned education, 
toward which his father had refused all assistance. He was 
sent to be educated at Eton, where a maternal uncle, named 
Antrobus, was one of the assistant-masters. He remained here 
six years, and made himself a good classic ; he was an intimate 
associate of the accomplished Richard West, this being one of 
the most interesting school-friendships on record. West went 
to Oxford, whence he thus wrote to Gray : 

"You use me verv cruelly : you have sent me but one letter since I have been at Oxford, 
and that too agreeable not to make me ?ensible how great my loss is in not having more. 
Next to seeing you is the pleasure of seeing your handwriting ; next to hearing you is the 
pleasure cf hearing from you. Eeally and sincerely, I wonder at you, that you thought 
it noc worth while to answer my last letter. 1 hope this will have better success in behalf 
of your quondam school-fellow ; iu behalf of one who has walked hand in hand with you, 
like the two children in the wood, 

Thro' many a flow'ry path and shelly grot, 
Where learning luU'd her in her private* maze. 

The very thought, you see, tips my pen with poetry, and brings Eton to my view." 

Another of Gray's associates at Eton was Horace Walpole; 
they removed together to Cambridge ; Gray resided at Peter- 
house from 1735 to 1738, when he left without a degree. The 
spirit of Jacobitism and its concomitant hard drinking, which 
then prevailed at Cambridge, ill suited the taste of Gray ; nor 
did the uncommon proficiency he had made at Eton hold first 
rank, for he complains of college impertinences, and the endurance 
of lectures, daily and hourly. "Must I pore into metaphysics?" 
asks Gray. "Alas, I cannot see in the dark ; nature has not 
furnished me with the optics of a cat. Must 1 pore upon mathe- 
matics ? Alas, I cannot see in too much light : I am no eagle. 
It is very possible that two and two make four, but I would not 
give four farthings to demonstrate this ever so clearly ; and if 
these be the profits of life, give me the amusements of it." Yet 
Gray subsequently much regretted that he had never applied 
his mind to the study of mathematics ; and once, rather late in 

♦This expression prettily distinguishes their studies when out of the public Echool, 
which would, naturally, at their age, be vague and desultory. — Mason. 



216 Scliool-Days of Eminent Men. 

life, had an intention to undertake it. His time at Cambridge 
was devoted to classics, modern languages, and poetry ; and a 
few Latin poems and English translations were made bj him at 
this period. In "the agonies of leaving college," he complains 
of "the dust, the old boxes, the bedsteads, and tutors," that were 
about his ears. "1 am coming away," he says, "all so fast, and 
leaving behind me without the least- remorse, all the beauties of 
Stourbridge Fair. Its white bears may roar, its apes may 
wring their hands, and crocodiles cry their eyes out, all's 
one for that ; I shall not once visit them, nor so much as take 
my leave." 

In a letter to Mr. West, he says : '• I learn Italian like any di^agon, and in two months 
am got through the 16th Book of Tasso, whom I hold in great admiration ; 1 want you to 
learn too, that I may know your opinion of him ; nothing can he easier than that language 
to anyone who knows Latin and French already, and there are few so copious and express- 
ive." In the same letter he tells him, "that his college has set him a versifying on a 
public occat^iou (viz., those verses which are called Tripos), on the theme of Luna est 
habitabilis.''^ The poem is to be found in the Muscp Elnnens&s. (vol. ii, p 107 ) . . . . 
"His hexameters are, as far as modern ones can be, after the manner of Virgil. They 
move in the succession of his pauses, and close with his elisions." — Maso7i. 

In 1739, Gray accompanied Horace Walpole on a tour through 
France and Italy; but, as they could not agree. Gray being, as 
Walpole has it, "too serious a companion," the former returned 
to England in 1741. He next went to Cambridge, to take his 
degree in Civil Law. He now devoted himself to the classics, 
and at the same time cultivated his muse. At Cambridge he 
was considered an unduly fastidious man, and the practical jokes 
and "incivilities" played off upon him by his fellow-inmates at 
Peterhouse — one of which was a false alarm of fire, through 
which he descended from his window to the ground by a rope — 
was the cause of his migrating to Pembroke Hall. He subse- 
quently obtained the professorship of Modern History in the 
University. He usually passed the summer with his mother at 
Stoke, near Eton, in which picturesque locality he composed his 
two most celebrated poems — the Ode on a Distant Prospect of 
Eton College, and his Elegy written in a Country Churchyard. 
In the Ode, he exclaims with filial fervor to the College where 
he had spent six years of his life as a boy: 

Ye distant spires, ye antique towers. 

That crown the wa ery glade, 
Where grateful Science still adores 

Her Henry's holy shade ; 
And ye, that from the stately brow 
Of \\ indsor's heights, th' expan.«e below 

Of grove, of lawn, of mead survey, 
Who.=e turf, whose shade, whose flowers among 
Wanders the hoary Thames along 

His silver-winding way : 

Ah, happy hills! ah, pleasing shade I 
Ah, fields beloved in vain 1 



Anecdote Biographies. 217 

Where once my careless childhood stray'd, 

A stranger jet to pain ! 
I feel the gales that from ye blow 
A momentary bliss bestow, 

As waving fresh their gladsome wing, 
My weary soul they seem to soothe, 
And, redolent of joy and youth. 

To breathe a second spring. 

Say. Father Thames, for thou hast seen 

Full many a sprightly race 
Disporting on thy margent green, • 

The paths of pleasure trace; 
Who foremost now delight to cleave, 
With pliant arm thy glassy wave ? 

The captive linnet which enthrall I 
What idle progeny succeed 
To chase the rolling circle's speed,* 

Or urge the flying ball? 

Gray continued to reside at Cambridge (it is considered) prin- 
cipally on account of the valuable libraries of the University — 
for he was one of the greatest readers, though the most sparing 
of writers. While at dinner one day in the College-hall, he was 
taken ill, and after six days' suffering, he expired July 30, 1771 : 
he was buried according to his desire, by the side of his mother, 
at Stoke. Gray was a profound as well as elegant scholar; ''he 
attained the highest degree of splendor of which poetical style 
seems to be capable ; he is the only modern English writer 
whose Latin verses deserve general notice ; in his letters he has 
shown the descriptive powers of a poet ; in new combinations 
of generally familiar words he was eminently happy ; and he 
was the most learned poet since Milton." (^Sir James Mack- 
intosh.) Gray was also an excellent botanist, zoologist, and 
antiquary. 

The accomplished Earl of Carlisle, who has elegantly com- 
memorated the genius of this poet, feeling the identification 
which his celebrated Ode gives to his muse with the memory of 
Eton, has presented to the College a bust of Gray, which has 
been added to the collection of the busts of other worthies placed 
in the Upper School-room. 

HOW BRINDLET TAUGHT HIMSELF THE RUDIMENTS OF 

MECHANICS. 

James Brindley, the sagacious engineer, was born in Derby- 
shire, in 1716, and was employed when a boy in field labor. 
His father, who had reduced himself to extreme poverty by his 
dissipated habits, allowed his son to grow up without any educa- 
tion ; and to the end of his life this great genius was barely able 
to read, and could write little more than his own name. At the 
age of 17, he apprenticed himself to a millwright at Macclesfield, 

* " To chase the hoop's elusive speed." — MS. 



218 School-Days of Eminent Men. 

a fe,w miles from his native place. He was sadly neglected by 
his master, who frequently left him for whole weeks together, to 
execute works concerning which he had not given him any in- 
struction. These works Brindley finished in his own way, greatly 
to the surprise of his master, who was often astonished at the 
improvements his apprentice from time to time introduced into 
the millwright business. He rose to be the greatest engineer of 
his day, not only in mill machinery, but in drainage works, and 
the improvement of our inland navigation by canals. It was 
when being examined before a Committee of the House of Com- 
mons, and being asked for what objects rivers were created, he 
gave the ready answer, "To feed navigable canals." 

Brindley's designs were the resources of his own mind alone. 
When he was beset with any difficulty, he secluded himself, and 
worked out unaided the means of accomplishing his schemes. 
Sometimes he lay in bed for two or three days ; but when he 
arose, he proceeded at once to carry his plans into effect, without 
the help of drawings or models. 

"WILLIAM COLLINS AT WINCHESTER AND OXFORD. 

William Collins, whose odes exhibit vast powers of poetry, 
and who is inferior to no English poet of the 18th century, ex- 
cept Gray, was born at Chichester, in 1721.* His father was 
a hatter, and at the time of the poet's birth, mayor of Chiches- 
ter. He was sent, when very young, to the prebendal school 
there, an ancient institution founded by Bishop Storey, in the 
reign of Edward IV.; here also were educated Selden, Bishop 
Juxon, and Hurdis. Collins was early designed by his parents 
for the church. He was removed from Chichester, and ad- 
mitted a scholar on the foundation of Winchester College in 
1733. 

In this venerable institution — where the scholars on the foundation wear the dress pre- 
scribed by the rules of the founder, in which rejoicings over a holiday are sung in ancient 
Latin verse, and terms and phrases long fallen into disuse without its walls, are still the 
current talk of healthy boys — Collins remained seven years. The master was then Dr. 
Burton, a name that will long be associated with the college. Among Collins's school- 
fellows were William Whitehead and Joseph Warton, the poets, and Hampton, afterward 



* Collins, in his " Ode to Pity,"' alludes to his " native plains,-' which are bounded by 
the South Downs, and to the small river Arun, one of the streams of Sussex, near 
which Otway al£o was born : 

But wherefore need I wander wide 
To old Ilissus's distant side ? 

Deserted stream and mute I 
Wild Arun, too, has heard thy strains, 
And Echo 'midst my native plains 

Been soothed by Pity's lute. 




Anecdote Biographies. 219 

translator of Polvbins — L^fe-, hy Mr. Moy Thomas, prefixed to new edition of Collinses 
PoeiicaL Works. "1858.* 

About September, 1733, Lord Peterborough paid a vitit to 
Winchester College, with Pope, who proposed a subject for 
a poem. Collins was then too young to contest the prizes, 
which were carried off by Whitehead and Hampton; but he 
must have seen Pope on that occasion. Johnson speaks of verses 
published five years later as those by which Collins "first 
courted the notice of the public;" but he appears to have made 
verses as early as Pope. He is said at twelve years old to have 
written a poem " On the Battle of the School-books," at 
Winchester, probably suggested by Swift's satire, of which the 
line — 

" And every Gradus flapped his leathern wing" — 

was afterward remembered. 

At Winchester, when about seventeen years old, Collins 
wrote his Persian Eclogues, after reading that volume of 
Salmon's Modern History which describes Persia. In January, 
1733, some lines, by Collins, appeared in the Genthinan's 
Magazine ; and in October of that year, the Editor inserted a 
Sonnet from Collins, together with some verses of Joseph 
Warton, and another school-fellow at Winchester, which came, 
he tells us, " in one letter;" and in the next number of the Mag- 
azine appeared a criticism on the above three poems, written by 
Dr. Johnson, then toiling in poverty and obscurity, for Cave : he 
gives the palm to Collins's Sonnet. 

On March 21, 1740, Collins was formally admitted a com- 
moner of Queen's College ; but he did not go to Oxford until 
some time afterward. In the summer of the same year, Collins 
was elected at Winchester, and placed first on the roll for ad- 
mission in the succeeding year to New College, Oxford ; but no 
vacancy occurred — a rare misfortune, — which, however, had 
befallen the poet Young some years before. 

Next year, Collins was admitted a Demy of Magdalen 
College, where he continued to devote himself to poetry. Lang- 
horne states that he was at this time distinguished for genius 
and indolence, and that the few exercises which he could be 
induced to write bore evident marks of both qualities. Among 
his college acquaintances were Hampton and Gilbert White, 
and his constant friends the two Wartons. On November 18, 
1743, Collins took the degree of Bachelor of Arts: he quitted 
the college at some time before the July election in 1744. 
He obtained a curacy, but soon gave up all views in the church, 

* Aldine Poets. Published by Bell and Daldy. This edition has a portrait of Collins at 
the age of fourteen, from a drawing : no other portrait of Collins is known to exist. 



220 School-Days of Eminent Men, 

and preferred the precarious profession of a man of letters. 
His irresolution soon led him into difficulties. But his studies 
were extensive, and his scholarship great. His Odes have 
always been the favorite of poets ; and they won for him the 
praises he prized most. He enjoyed the friendship and affec- 
tion of Johnson ; and the intimacy of Thomson. But the latter 
part of his short life must be remembered with pity and sad- 
ness : he languished for some years under depression of mind, 
and was for a time bereft of reason. He died in 1756, at 
Chichester, and is buried in the Cathedral, where a monu- 
ment, by Flaxman, has been erected to his memory. The 
poet is represented reading an English Testament, such as at 
one period he invariably traveled with ; it is referred in the 
inscription on the tablet by the poet Hayley and Mr. John 
Sargent : 

Who joined pure faith to strong poetic powers ; 
Who, in reviving reason's lucid hours. 
Sought on one book his troubled mind to rest, 
And rightly deemed the book of God the best. 

LORD CLIYE HIS DARING BOYHOOD. 

Robert Clive, the founder of the British empire in India, 
was born in 172G, at Styche, near Market Drayton, in Shrop- 
shire, where his family had been settled since the twelfth century. 

Some lineaments of the character of the man (says Lord Macaulay) were early dis- 
cerned in the child There remain letters written by his relations when he was in his 
seventh year; and from these letters it appears that, even at that early age. his stron<j will 
and his fiery passions, sustained by a constitutional intrepidity which Konietimes seemed 
hardly compatible with soundness of mind, had begun to cause great uneasiness to his 
family. '• fighting,"' says one of his uncles, " to which he is out of measure addicted, 
gives his temper such a fieiceness and imperiousness, that he flies out on every trifling 
occasion." The old people in the neighborhood still remember to have heard from their 
parents how Bob Clive climbed to the top of the lofty steeple of Market Drayton, and with 
what terror the inhabitants saw him seated on a stone spout near the summit. They aho 
relate how he formed all the idle lads of the town into a kind of predatory army, and com- 
pelled the shopkeepers to submit to a tribute of apples and halfpence, in consideration of 
which he guar-inteed the security of their windows. He was sent from school to school, 
making very little progress in his learning, and gaining for himself everywhere the char- 
acter of an exceedingly naughty boy. One of his masters, it is said, was .«agacious enough 
to prophesy that the idle lad would make a great figure in the world. But the general 
opinion seems to have been that poor Kobert was a dunce, if not a reprobate. Ilis family 
expected nothing good from such slender parts and such a headstrong temper It is not, 
strange, therefore, that they gladly accepted for him, when he was in his eighteenth year, 
a writership in the service of the East India Compauy, and .shipped him off to make a for- 
tune, or die of fever at Madras. 

Clive arrived at Madras in 1744, where his situation was 
most painful : his pay was small, he was wretchedly lodged, and 
his shy and haughty disposition withheld him from introducing 
himself to strangers. The climate affected his health and spirits, 
and his duties were ill-suited to his ardent and daring character. 
"He pined for his home, and in his letters to his relations ex- 
pressed his feelings in language softer and more pensive than 
we should have expected from the waywardness of his boyhood, 



I 



Anecdote Biographies. 221 

or from the inflexible sternness of his later years. ' I have not 
enjoyed,' says he, 'one happy day since I left my native coun- 
try;' and again, 'I must confess at intervals, when I think of 
my dear native England, it affects me in a very particular man- 
ner.'" Clive, however, found one solace. The Governor of 
Madras possessed a good library, and permitted Clive to have 
access to it : he devoted much of his leisure to reading, and ac- 
quired at this time almost all the knowledge of books that he 
ever possessed. As a boy he had been too idle, as a man he had 
become too busy, for literary pursuits. 

His career of prosperity and glory, of wounded honor and 
bodily affliction, has been vividly drawn by Lord Macaulay, who 
considers him entitled to an honorable place in the estimation 
of po-terity. From his first visit to India, dates the renown of 
the English arms in the East; from his second visit, the 
political ascendancy of the English in that country ; and from 
his third visit, the purity of the administration of our Eastern 
empire, which, since this was written, the wicked ingratitude of 
revolt has done so much to endanger. 

CAPTAIN cook's EDUCATION ON BOARD SHIP. 

It was at sea that Cook acquired those high scientific accom- 
plishments by which he became the first circumnavigator of his 
day. He was born in 1728, and was the son of an agricultural 
laborer and farm-bailiff, at Marton, near Stockton-upon-Tees. 
All the school education he ever had was a little reading, writ- 
ing, and arithmetic, for which he was indebted to the liberality 
of a gentleman in the neighborhood. He was apprenticed, at 
the age of 13, to a haberdasher at the fishing-town of Staiths, 
near Whitby; while in this situation he was first seized with a 
passion for the sea ; and having procured a discharge from his 
master, he apprenticed himself to a firm in the coal trade at 
Whitby, on board a coasting-vessel. In this service he rose to 
be mate, when, in 1755, being in the Thames, he entered as a 
volunteer in the royal navy. lie soon distinguished himself so 
greatly that in three or four years afterward he was appointed 
master of the Mercury, which belonged to a squadron then pro- 
ceeding to attack Quebec. Here he first showed the proficiency 
he had already made in the scientific part of his profession by 
constructing an admirable chart of the river St. Lawrence. He 
felt, however, the disadvantages of his ignorance of mathemat- 
ics ; and while still assisting in the hostile operations carrying 
on against the French on the coast of North America, he 
applied himself to the study of Euclid's Elements, which he 
soon mastered, and then began to study astronomy. A year or 



222 School-Days of Emment Men, 

two after, while stationed in the same quarter, he communicated 
to the Royal Society an account of a solar eclipse, which took 
place August 5, 1766 ; deducing from it, with great exactness 
and skill, the longitude of the place of observation. He had 
now completely established his reputation as an able and scien- 
tific seaman ; and was next appointed to the command of the 
Endeavour^ fitted out by Government for the South Sea, to 
observe the approaching transit of the planet Venus over the 
sun's disc, which he most satisfactorily recorded, besides a large 
accession of important geographical discoveries. He was next 
appointed to an expedition to the same regions, to determine the 
question of the existence of a south polar continent. Of this 
voyage. Cook drew up the account, which is esteemed a model in 
that species of writing. 

JOHN hunter's want OF EDUCATION. 

The well-known John Hunter, one of the greatest anatomists 
that ever lived, scarcely received any education whatever until 
he was twenty years old. He was born in 1728, in Lanarkshire, 
and was the youngest of a family of ten. When he was only 
ten years old, his father died, and the boy was left to act as he 
chose. Such was his aversion at this time to anything like reg- 
ular application, that he could scarcely be taught even the ele- 
ments of reading and writing ; while an attempt that was made 
to give him some knowledge of Latin (according to the plan of 
education then almost universally followed in regard to the sons 
of even the smallest landed proprietors in Scotland), was, after 
a short time, abandoned altogether. Thus Hunter grew up, 
spending his time merely in country amusements, until there 
was no provision for maintaining him longer in idleness. So 
destitute was he of all literary acquirements, that he could only 
look for employment of his hands, rather than his head. He 
was accordingly apprenticed to his brother-in-law, a carpenter, 
in Glasgow, with whom he learned to make chairs and tables ; 
and this, probably, might have been for life Hunter's employ- 
ment, but for the failure of his master, when John was thrown 
out of work. He then applied to his elder brother. Dr. William 
Hunter, already settled in London, and distinguished as a lec- 
turer and anatomical demonstrator. John offered his services 
as an assistant in the dissecting-room, adding, that if his proposal 
should not be accepted, he meant to enlist in the army. Fortu- 
nately for science, his letter was answered in the way he wished : 
he came to London, began by dissecting an arm, and so succeeded, 
that Dr. Hunter foretold he would become an excellent anato- 
mist. This was verified ; but he never entirely overcame the 



Anecdote Biographies. 223 

disadvantages entailed upon him by neglect in his earlj years. 
He attained little acquaintance with the literature of his own 
profession, and he continued to the end of his life an awkward 
writer. "If these," says Mr. Craik,* "were heavy penalties, 
however, which he had to pay for what was not so much his 
fault as that of others, the eminence to which he attained in 
spite of them is only the more demonstrative of his extraordinary 
natural powers, and his determined perseverance." 

EDMUND BURKE AT BALLITORE AND DUBLIN. 

This renowned orator and statesman was born in Dublin, on 
the 1st of January, 1730, or, as the register of Trinity College, 
Dublin, states, 1728. His father, Richard Burke, or Bourke, a 
Protestant, and of good family, was an attorney in large practice. 
His mother was a Miss Nagle, a Roman Catholic lady, and 
great-niece of Miss Ellen Nagle, who married Sylvanus Spenser, 
the eldest son of the poet; the name of Edmund may possibly, 
therefore, have been adopted from the author of the Faerie 
Queene by the subject of the present memoir. 

During his boyhood, Burke's health was very delicate, even 
to the risk of consumption. His first instructor was his njother, 
a woman of strong mind, cultivated understanding, and fervent 
piety. Many years of his childhood were passed among his 
maternal relatives in the south of Ireland, especially with his 
grandfather at Castletown Roche, in a locality teeming with the 
romance of history; for here, at Kilcolman Castle, Spenser wrote 
his Faerie Queene ; and here lived Essex and Raleigh. It is 
but natural to suppose that here, upon the beautiful banks of the 
Blackwater, England's future orator imbibed in the poetry of 
the Faerie Queene that taste for ornate and eastern imagery 
which gave such splendor to his eloquence ; and here, amid the 
memories hanging around the ruins of Kilcolman, he thirsted 
for the historic knowledge which he afterward threw with such 
power and prophetic force into his reasoning and his language."! 
He was an ardent admirer of the epic poet: "Whoever relishes 
and reads Spenser as he ought to be read," said Burke in after- 
life, " will have stronc; hold of the English languanre ;" and there 
are many coincidences of expression between Burke and 
Spenser, 

Young Burke learned the rudiments of Latin from a school- 
master in the village of Glanworth, near Castletown Roche. 
This teacher, O'Halloran, afterward boasted that "No matter 
how great Master Edmund was, he was the first who had ever 

* Pursuit of Knowledge, vol. i. t Life of Burke. By Peter Burke. 1853. 



224 School-Bays of Eminent Men. 

put a Latin grammar into his hands." In his twelfth year he 
was sent with his brothers, Garrett and Richard, to the classical 
school of Ballitore, in the county of Kildare, then kept by 
Abraham Shackleton, a member of the Society of Friends, and 
a man of high classical attainments. The master liked his pupil, 
and the pupil became fond of his master ; and during the two 
years that Burke remained at Ballitore, he studied diligently, 
and laid the foundation of a sound classical education. Burke 
was ever grateful to his excellent tutor. 

In the House of Commons he paid a noble tribute to the memory of Abraham Shackle- 
ton, declaring that he was an honor to his sect, though that sect was one of the purest. 
He ever considered it as one of the greatest blessings of his life that he had been placed at 
the good Quaker's academy, and readily acknowledged it was to Abraham Shackleton that 
he owed the education that made him worth anything.* A member of the Society of 
Friends had always peculiar claims on his sympathy and regard t Burke's bosom friend 
at Ballitore was Uichard Shackleton, the .schoolmaster's son : they read together, walked 
together, and composed their first verses together ; unlike most school-boy ties, which sel- 
dom endure the first rough contact with the world, the friendship of Burke and Shackle- 
ton remained fresh, pure, and ardent, until the close of their existence. t 

Burke entered Trinity College, Dublin, in the spring of 1743. 
He became, in 1746, a scholar of the house, which is similar to 
being a scholar of Christchurch, Oxford. Oliver Goldsmith, who 
was at Trinity with Burke, states that he did not distinguish 
himself in his academical exercises ; and Dr. Leland, another 
of his cotemporaries, supports Goldsmith's statement. But 
Burke undoubtedly acquired at Ballitore a good knowledge of 
the ordinary classics ; and, says Mr. Macknight, his miscellane- 
ous reading gave him more extensive views than could be 
acquired from the usual text-books of the college. Burke, says 
the same biographer, seems never to have thought of applying 
himself systematically to one branch of study, or seriously 
labored to acquire gold medals, prize-books, and worldly dis- 
tinctions. But the longer he remained at college, th3 more 
desultory his course of study became : he took up violently with 
natural philosophy — his furor mathematicus ; then he worked at 

* In one of his speeche.=!, when he was 50 years old, he said : '' I was educated a Protest- 
ant of the Church of England by a Dissenter who was an honor to his sect. Under his 
eye, I read the Bible morning, noon, and night ; and I have ever since been a happier and 
a better man fur such reading." — ^Vorks and Corresponderce, vol. i. p. 17, quoted in The 
Life and Times of Edmund Burke, by Thomas Macknight. 1858. 

t When Mr. Burke was informed that Mr. West was a Quaker, he said that he always 
regarded it among the most fortunate circumstances of his life that his first preceptor was 
a member of the Society of Friends. — Early Life and Studiis of Benjamin West, vol. ii. p. 8. 

I There is a pleasing anecdote connected with Edmund Burke's .subsequent intercour.<;e 
with the Shackletons. In the early part of his political career, he was officially installed 
in apartments in Dublin Castle. No sooner was he there, than his good friends the Shack- 
letons hastened to pay him a visit, and, of cour.^e, expected to find the incipient states- 
man, whose industry was already a public theme, immersed in Government afi^airs. What 
was their surprise when, on entering his room, they caught him at play with his children : 
he was on all-fours, carrying one of them on his back round the room, whilst the other, a 
chubby infant, lay crowing with delight upon the carpet. The incident recalls a eixuiiar 
story told of the famous Bourbon prince, Henry the Fourth. 



Anecdote Biographies, 225 

logic — his furor logiciis ; to this succeeded his furor Mstoricusi 
which subsided into his old complaint, furor poeticus, the most 
dangerous and difficult to cure of" all these forms of madness. 

Of Burke's favorite authors, many accounts have been given. 
His letters show that of the Roman historians Sallust was his 
delight. He preferred Cicero's Orations to his Epistles ; and 
his frequent quotation of Virgil, Horace, and Ovid, shows how 
deeply his mind was imbued with their classic imagery. There 
are few indications of his application to Greek literature. Of 
modern authors he took most pleasure in Milton, whom he de- 
lighted to illustrate at his Debating Society ; yet, he greeted 
Ossian's song of the Son of FIngal with more applause than he 
bestowed on Shakspeare.* He loved Horace and Lucretius; 
and defended against Johnson the paradox that though Homer 
was a greater poet than Virgil, yet the JEneid was a greater 
poem than the Iliad. 

While at college, Burke was a member of that excellent insti- 
tution of juvenile debate for the use of the students of Trinity, 
called the Historical Society, which was the arena not only of 
his incipient oratory, but of that of many others among the 
greatest men Ireland has produced. 

In 1748, Burke took his degree of B.A. ; that of M.A. he ob- 
tained in 1751 ; and he was presented with the further degree of 
LL.D. in 1791. Meantime, having been intended for the Eng- 
lish bar, he had entered at the Middle Temple in 1747; and 
early in 1750, he left Dublin for London. 

Burke's college career was free from vice or dissipation. 

A high moral tone and dignified bearing, tempered as they were by an extreme urbanity 
of manner, and a wonderful power of charming in conversation, had already become his 
characteristics ; already, too, his company was sought among the fashionable, as much as 
among the learned, lie had that great art of good breeding wLich rendered men pleased 
with him and wifh tliemselves. lie had an inexhaustible fund of discourse, either serious 
or jocose, seasoned with wit and humor, poignant, strong, delicate, sportive, as answered 
the purpose or occasion. He had a vast variety of anecdotes and storie=, which were 
always well adapted and well told ; he had al.«o a constant cheerfulness and high spirits. 
His looks and voice were in unison with the agreeable insinuation and impressiveness of 
his conversation and manners. Possessing these attractions — his lasting possessions — it 
was no wonder that at all times Burke found it easy to have whatever associates he liked; 
ard he always chose the best- — Ptter Burue. 

* Yet, Burke perfected his oratory by studying Shakspeare. He is thought to have 
overrated Ossian to please Macpherson, who, being the agent of the Nabob of Arcot, had 
probably laid Burke under obligation by affording him information on Indian affairs. 

Burke was more of a versifier in his youth than was ever suppo.<:ed until some time afler 
his death. When Sir James Mackintosh said that had Burke ever acquired the habit of 
versification, he would have poured forth volumes of sublime -poGtry (MackintoslV s Memoirs^ 
by his Son), he little suspected that while he was at Trinity College, the great statesman 
and philosopher was the most inveterate of versifiers He seldom wrote a letter to a friend 
without inclosing him some specimens of his verse which, though rarely above common- 
place, breathe a sincere love of all that is virtuous, beautiful, and pious ; he continued his 
poetical efforts longer, and met with less success, than any man who ever engaged in polit- 
ical life with a tenth part of his qualifications. — Mucknight, vol. 1. p. 26. 

15 



226 School-Bays of Eminent Men, 



COWPER AT WESTMINSTER. 

William Cowper, " the most popular poet of his generation, 
and the best of English letter-writers," was the son of Dr. John 
Cowper, rector of Great Berkhampstead, Herts, and was born 
at the parsonage-house, in 1731. In his sixth year he lost his 
mother, of whom he alwa}' s retained the most affectionate recol- 
lection : the deprivation of her tenderness laid the seeds of those 
infirmities which afterward afflicted his manhood. In the year 
of his mother's death, he was, as he himself describes it, "taken 
from the nursery, and from the immediate care of a most indul- 
gent mother," and sent out of his father's house to a consider- 
able school kept by a Dr. Pitman, at Market-street. Here for 
two years he suffered much from ill-treatment by his rough com- 
panions: his sensibility and delicate health were the objects of 
their cruelty and ridicule ; and one boy so relentlessly persecuted 
him that he was expelled, and Cowper was removed from the 
school. Cowper retained in late years a painful recollection of 
the terror with which this boy inspired him. "His savage 
treatment of me," he says, " impressed such a dread of his fig- 
ure on my mind, that I well remember being afraid to lift my 
eyes upon him higher than his knees ; and that I knew him 
better by his shoe-buckle than by any other part of his dress." 
To the brutality of this boy's character, and the general im- 
pression left upon Cowper's mind by the tyranny he had under- 
gone at Dr. Pitman's, may be traced Cowper's prejudice against 
the whole system of public education, so forcibly expressed in 
his poem called Tirocinium; or, a Review of Schools. 

About this time Cowper was attacked with an inflammation 
in the eyes, and was placed in the house of an oculist, where he 
remained two years, and was but imperfectly cured. 

At the end of this time, at the age of ten, he was removed to 
Westminster School. The sudden change from the isolation of 
the oculist's house to the activity of a large public school, and 
the collision with its variety of characters and tempers, helped 
to feed and foster the moods of dejection to wdiich Cowper was 
subject. His constitutional despondency was deepened by his 
sense of solitude in being surrounded by strangers ; and thus, 
thrown in upon himself, he took refuge in brooding over his 
spiritual condition. This tendency had first manifested itself at 
Dr. Pitman's school, and next at Westminster. Passing one 
evening through St. Margaret's churchyard, he saw a light glim- 
mering at a distance from the lantern of a grave-digger, who, as 
Cowper approached, threw up a skull that struck him on the leg. 
** This little incident," he observes, " was an alarm to my con- 



Anecdote Biographies, 227 

science ; for the event may be remembered amono- the best 
rehgious documents I received at Westminster." He ^ouo-ht 
hope m religious consolations, and then hopelessly abandoned 
them; and he was struck with lowness of spirits, and intimations 
ot a consumptive habit, which the watchful sympathies of home 
might possibly have averted or subdued. 

Nevertheless, Cowper appears to have been sufficiently strong 
and healthy to excel at cricket and football; and he persevered 
so successfully in his studies, that he stood in high favor with 
the master for his scholarship. Looking back many years after- 
ward on this part of his life, he only regretted the lack of his 
religious mstruction. Latin and Greek, he complains, were all 
that he acquired. The duty of the school-boy absorbed every 
other, with the single exception of the periodical preparations 
lor confirmation, to which we find this interesting testimony in 
nis letters : -^ 

" That f may do justice to the place of my education, I must relate nn*. ,^o.v r,r 
religious discipHne, which, in my time, was observed at \"estmSster I L,n fhT • ^'^ 
which Dr Nichols took to prepare us for confirmation ThfoSmfn ^c J uShtmsSf of 
this duty like one who had a deep sense of its importance : and I believe moS of us wlrp 
struck by his manner, and aEfected by his exhortations." ^^'^^ 

Cowper translated twenty of Vinny Bourne's poems into Eng- 
lish and his allusions to his old fiivorite usher of the fifth form 
at VVestminster are frequent.* 

lockJ l^ZT^V^""^^ Co^V^v) seeing the Duke of Richmond set fire to Vinny's creasv 
' ? fh^n^. ^'^ ^^^\ *° P"^ i' ^"^^ ^"'^^°- " A'^d again, writing to Mr. Koi Snef ^avs^ 
I shall have great pleasure in taking now and then a peep at mv old Send V np/n^■ 
Bourne; the neatest of all men in his versification, though, when "w^. under his nT.r 
ship at W estminster. the most slovenly in his person He was so inr^^Lnvl L .^ u 
and so indifferent whether they brou„4t good'oTbad exe^Ss'or'n'onrTaS 'llatT^ 
seemed determined, as he was the best, so he should be the last, Latin poe of the tvest 
minster line ; a plot, which I believe he exercised very successfu Iv : for^I have not heard 
of anyone who has at a deserved to be compared with him," Even in thltime of h^ 
last Illness, we find that Cowper's dreary thoughts were, for the moment charmed Lav 
by the poems of his old favorite, Vincent Bourne. ' ^ ^ i"« moment, cuarmed a\\ay 

Among Cowper's cotemporaries at Westminster were William 
(afterward Sir William) Russell, whose premature death he had 
early occasion to deplore; Cumberland, the essayist, with whom 

* Vincent or Jinny Bourne, the elegant Latin poet, and usher of Westminster School 
where he was educated, died in 1747. Cowper ha^ left also this feeling tdbrio his old' 

vll ^7^ *^A^ memory of Vinny Bourne. I think him a better Latin poet than TibuUus 
Propertius, Ausomus or any of the writers in hh way, except Ovid, and not at all in?eS 
n.nH .^; oV ^ k;^ ■> ^^ common t . meet with an author who can make you smile, 
and3et at nobody's expense; who is always entertaining, and yet always harmless and 
who, though always elegant, and classical in a degree not a wavs found eJen in ?he classks 

anrnnSv^nf^h™' '""'' ^y the simplicity and playfulness of his ideas tha^b; the neatness 
and purity of his verse : yet such was poor Vinny " c<*i/ut.»8 

=.nPp^^'' ^''^if translations of the ballads of "iveedside," "William and Margaret" 
and Rowe's '■ Despairing beside a Clear Stream," in sweetness of numbers and deS ex- 
TibuS """^ origmals, and are considered scarcely inferior to any thing in Ovid Jr 



228 School-Days of Eminent Men, 

he lod-ed; Impey, and Hastings, afterward distinguished in 
India; and G. Colman, Lloyd, and Churchill; these, with a few 
other Westminster men, limited to seven, formed the Nonsense 
Club. Cowper likewise speaks of the five brothers Bagot, his 
school-fellows, as " very amiable and valuable boys." With one 
of them, Walter Bagot, he renewed his intimacy twenty years 
after they left school: '^ felt much affection for him,'' says 
Cowper; and the more so, because it was plain that after so 
long a time he still retained his for me." Such a renewal of 
school-friendship is very rare. 

Cowper was taken from Westminster at eighteen. He has 
left, amidst many recollections of a less cheerful cast, the follow- 
ing pleasing picture : 

Be it a weakness, it deserves some praise, 
We love the play-place of our early days ; 
The scene is touching, and the heart is stone 
That feels not at the sight, and feels at uoue. 
The walls on which we tried our graving skill, 
The very name we carved, subsisting still ; 
The bench on which we sat while deep employed. 
Though mangled, hacked, and hewed, not yet destroyed ; 
The little ones, unbuttoned, glowing hot. 
Playing our games, and on the very spot ; , 
As happy as we once, to kneel and draw 
The chalky ring, and knuckle down at taw ; 
> To pi»-ch the ball into the grounded hat, 
Or drive it devious with a dextrous pat ; 
The pleasing spectacle at once excites 
Such recollection of our own delights, _ 
That, viewing it, we seem almost to attain 
Our innocent, sweet simple years again. 
This fond attachment to the well-known place, 
Whence first we started into life's long race, 
Maintains its hold with such unfailing sway, 
We feel it even in age, and at our latest day. 

AVARKEN HASTINGS AT WESTMINSTER. 

Few men stand so prominently from the historic canvas of the 
eic-hteenth century as Warren Hasting.s the first Governor- 
General of Bengal. He was born in 1732, and left a little 
orphan, destined to strange and memorable vicissitudes of for- 
tune. Of his childhood, Lord Macaulay has painted this impres- 
sive picture: 

"The child was sent early to the village school (of Daylsford, in Worcestershire), where 
ho learned his letters on the same bench with the sons of the peasantry ; nor did anyth ng 
ufhirgarb or fare indicate that his life was to take a widely different course from tha of 
IL youno- ruVtks with whom he studied and played. But no cloud could overcast the 
dawn of lo much genius and so much ambition. The very plowmen observed, and long 
remembered how kindly little Warren took to his book. When he was eigh years o d he 
weTtuD to London, and was sent to a school at Newington, where he was well taught but 
m fed He alwaTs attributed the smallness of his stature to the hard and scanty fare of 
this seminary At t.n, he was removed to Westminster school. Vinny Bourne was one of 
the Sers Churchi I, Colman, Lloyd, Cumberlnnd, Cowper, were among the students 
Warden was distinguished among his comrades as an excellent swimmer, boatman, and 
scho a? A? fourtfen he was first in the examination for the foundaion. His name m 
gUdedietttrs on the walls of the dormitory stiil attests his victory over many elder com 
peers. He stayed two years longer at the school, and was looking forward to a &tudent- 



Anecdote Biographies, 229 

ship at Christchurch, when he was remoTed from Westminster to fill a writership obtained 
for him in the service of the Ea?t India Company. He was placed for a few months at a 
commercial academy, to study arithmetic and book-keeping; and in January, 1750, a few 
days after he had completed his seventeenth year, he sailed for Bengal, and arrived at his 
destination in the October following " 

It is worthy of remark, that Warren Hastings was removed 
from Westminster through the death of his uncle, who bequeathed 
him to the care of a friend, who was desirous to get rid of his 
charge as soon as possible. Dr. Nichols, the head-master at 
Westminster, made strong remonstrances against the removal of 
a youth who seemed likely to be one of the first scholars of the 
age. He even offered to bear the expense of sending his favorite 
pupil to Oxford. But the guardian was inflexible, obtained for 
the youth the writership, and he was sent to India. Here he 
rose through indomitable force of will, which was the most 
striking peculiarity of his character, to be Governor-General of 
Bengal. Lord Macaulay touchingly says : 

" When, under a tropical sun, he ruled fifty millions of Asiatics, his hopes, amidst all the 
cares of war, finance, and les^islation, still pointed to Daylsford. And when his long pub- 
lic life, so singularly chequered with good and evil, with glory and obloquj', had at length 
closed for ever, it was to Daylsford he retired to die." 

GIBBON, THE HISTORIAN HIS SCHOOLS AND PLAN OF 

STUDY. 

Edward Gibbon, the celebrated historian, was born at Putney, 
in Surrey, 1737, in a house situated between the roads which 
lead to Wandsworth and Wimbledon. 

From his own account we learn that in childhood Gibbon's 
health M^as delicate, and that his early education was principally 
conducted by his aunt, Mrs. Porter. At the age of nine, he was 
sent to a boarding-school at Kingston-upon-Thames, where he 
remained two years, but made little progress, on account of his 
ill-health. The same cause prevented his attention to study at 
Westminster School, whither he was sent in 1749; and "his 
riper age was left to acquire the beauties of the Latin and the 
rudiments of the Greek tongue." After residing for a short 
time with the Pev. Philip Francis, the translator of Horace, he 
was removed, in 1752, to Oxford, where he matriculated as a 
gentleman commoner of Magdalen College, in his fifteenth year. 
Though his frequent absence from school had prevented him 
from obtaining much knowledge of Latin and Greek, his love of 
reading had led him to peruse many historical and geographical 
works ; and he arrived at Oxford, according to his own account, 
" with a stock of erudition that might have puzzled a doctor, and 
a degree of ignorance of which a school-boy would have been 
ashamed." His imperfect education was not improved during 
his residence at Oxford : his tutors he describes as easy men, 



230 School-Days of JEminent Men. 

who preferred receiving their fees to attending to the instruction 
of their pupils ; and after leading a somewhat dissipated life for 
fourteen months, he embraced the Roman Catholic faith. 

With the object of reclaiming Gibbon to Protestantism, his 
father sent him to Lausanne, in Switzerland, to reside with M. 
Pavillard, a Calvinist minister, whose arguments and Gibbon's 
own studies led him in the following year to profess his belief 
in the doctrines of the Protestant church. He remained in 
Switzerland for five years, during which time he studied hard, to 
remedy the defects of his early education. He had now become 
perfectly acquainted with the French lansruage, in which he 
composed his first work. His biographer^ Lord Sheffield, ob- 
serves that " Gibbon's residence at Lausanne was highly favor- 
able to his progress in knowledge, and the formation'of regular 
habits of study;" to this fortunate period of retirement" and 
application, he was chiefly indebted for his future reputation as 
a writer and a thinker; and for his production of the History of 
the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, the most brilliant 
work in modern historical literature. 

ARCHDEACON PALET AT CAMBRIDGE. 

Paley wus fortunate in his education. He was born at Peter- 
borough, in 1743: during his infancy, his father removed to 
Giggleswick, in Yorkshire, having been appointed head-master of 
King Edward's School, in that place. He was educated under 
his paternal roof, and soon distinguished himself by great abili- 
ties, a studious disposition, and a rare ripeness of intellect. In 
his seventeenth year he was entered a sizar of Christ's College, 
Cambridge; when his father declared that he would turn out 
a very great man, for he had by far the clearest head he had 
ever met with in his life. The event fully verified his parent's 
declaration. He graduated in 1763, and was senior wrangler. 
After completing his academical course, he became tutor in an 
academy at Greenwich; next curate of Greenwich; and fellow 
of his College, and lectured in the University on Moral Philos- 
ophy and the Greek Testament. Among his preferments he 
received the archdeaconry of Carlisle. As a writer he is dis- 
tinguished for power of intellect, skill in argument, and strong, 
exact, and clear style. His great works are on Moral and 
Political Philosophy, the Evidences of Christianity, and Natural 
Theology. Both in his metaphysical and ethical views, Paley 
was a follower of Locke. His merits are thus summed up by 
Bishop Turton: 

«Hllu^*fM?°f been deemed the glory of Socrates, that he brought Philosophy from the 
schoold of the learned to the habitations of men-by stripping it of its techuicaUties, and 



Anecdote Biographies. 231 

exhibiting it in the ordinary language of life. There is no one in modern times who has 
possessed the talent and disposition fur achievements of this itind to an equal extent with 
ra'.ey ; and we can scarcely conceive any one to have employed such qualities with greater 
success. The transmutation of metals into gold was the supreme object of the aichj mist's 
aspirations. But Paley had acquired a more enviable power. Knowledge, however ab- 
struse, by passing through his mind, became plain common sense — stamped with the chaj- 
acters which insured it currency in the world." 

Paley thus strikingly remarks on Teaching : 

Education, in the most extensive sen«e of the word, may comprehend every preparation 
that is made in our youth for the sequel of our lives ; and in this sense I use it. Some 
such preparation is necessary for all conditions, because without it they must be miserable^ 
and probably will be vicious when they grow up. either from the want of the means of 
subsistence, or from want of rational and inoffensive occupation. In civilized Ufe, every- 
thing is effected by art and skill. Whence, a person who is provided with neither (and 
neither can be acquired without exercise and instruction) will be useless; and he that is 
useless will generally be at the same time mischievous to the community So that to send 
an uneducated child into the world, is injurious to the rest ,of mankind; it is little better 
than to turn out a mad dog or a wild beast into the streets. 

SIR JOSEPH BANKS AT ETON. 

This distinguished naturalist, and great friend to the advance- 
ment of science, was born in Argyle-street, London, in 1743. 
He received his earliest education under a private tutor ; at nine 
years of age, he was sent to Harrow School, and was removed, 
when thirteen, to Eton. He is described in a letter from his 
tutor as being well-disposed and good-tempered, but so immo- 
derately fond of play, that his attention could not be fixed to 
study. When fourteen, he was found, for the first time, reading 
during his hours of leisure. This sudden turn, Banks, at a later 
period, explained to his friend. Sir Everard Home. One fine 
summer evening, he bathed in the Thames, as usual, with other 
boys, but having stayed a long time in the w-ater, he found, when 
he came to dress himself, that all his companions were gone: 
he was walking leisurely along a lane, the sides of which were 
richly enameled with flowers ; he stopped, and looking round, 
involuntarily exclaimed, " How beautiful !" After some reflec- 
tion, he said to himself, "it is surely more natural that I should 
be taught to know all these productions of nature, in preference 
to Greek and Latin ; but the latter is my father's command, 
and it is my duty to obey him: "I will, however, make myself 
acquainted with all these different plants for my own pleasure 
and gratification." He began immediately to teach himself 
botany ; and for want of more able tutors, submitted to be in- 
structed by the women employed in "culling simples," to sup- 
p'y the druggists' and apothecaries' shops; he paid sixpence for 
every material piece of information. While at home for the ensu- 
ing holidays, he found in his mother's dressing-room, to his great 
delight, a book in which all the plants he had met with were not 
only described, but represented by engravings. This proved to 
be Gerard's Herbal, which, although one of the boards was lost 



232 School-Days of Eminent Men, 

and several leaves were torn out, joung Banks carried with him 
to Eton, where he continued his collection of plants, and also 
made one of butterflies and other insects. Lord Brougham 
states that his father, who was Banks's intimate friend, describes 
him as "a remarkably fine-looking, strong, and active boy, whom 
no fatigue could subdue, and no peril daunt; and his whole time, 
out of school, was given up to hunting after plants and insects, 
making a hortus siccus of the one, and forming a cabinet of the 
other. As often as Banks could induce him to quit his task in 
reading or in verse-making (says Lord Brougham), he would 
take him on his long rambles ; and I suppose it was from this 
early taste that we had at Brougham so many butterflies, beetles, 
and other insects, as well as a cabinet of shells and fossils ; but 
my father always said that his friend Joe cared mighty little for 
his book, and could not understand any one taking to Greek and 
Latin." 

Banks left Eton at eighteen, and was entered a gentleman- 
commoner at Christchurch, Oxford, in December, 1760. His 
love of botany, which commenced at school, increased at the 
University, and there his mind warmly embraced all other 
branches of natural hi^tory. Finding there were no lectures 
given on botany, by permission, he engaged a botanical professor 
from Cambridge, to lecture at Oxford, his remuneration to be 
derived from the students who formed his class. Mr. Banks 
soon made himself known in the University by his superior 
knowledge of natural history. 

"lie once told me," says Everard Home, " that when he first went to Oxford, if he hap- 
pened to come into any party of students in which they were discussing questions respect- 
ing Greek authors, some of them would call out ' Here is Banks, but he knows nothing of 
Greek I' To this rebuke he would make no reply, but said to himself, I will yery soon 
excel you all in another kind of knowledge, in my mind of infinitely greater importance ; 
and not long after, when anj' of them wanted to clear up a point of natural history, they 
said, ' We must go to Banks ! ' " 

He left Oxford at the end of 1763, after having taken an 
honorary degree. His election into the Royal Society, and his 
presidency, and the extension of science, were the leading ob- 
jects of his after-life, during the last thirty years of which all 
the voyages of discovery made under the auspices of Govern- 
ment had either been suggested by him (Sir Joseph), or had 
received his approbation and support. He died in his 78th year. 

SIR WILLIAM JONES AT HARROW. 

This great Oriental scholar was born in London, in 1746: his 
father, an eminent mathematician, dying when his son was only 
three years old, the education of young Jones devolved upon his 
mother, a woman of extensive learning. When in his fifth year. 



Anecdote Biographies. 233 

the imagination of the young scholar was caught by the sublime 
description of the angei in the 10th chapter of the Apocalypse, 
and the impression was never effaced. In 1753, he was placed 
at Harrow School, under Dr. Thackeray, and continued under 
Dr. Sumner. 

Lord Teiornmoufch relates that, when a boy at Harrow, Sir W. Jones invented a political 
play, in which Dr. William Bennett, Bishop of Cloyne, and Dr. Farr, also boys, were his 
principal associates. They divided the fields in the neighborhood of Harrow according to 
a map of Greece, into states and kingdoms: each fixed upon oue as his dominions, and 
assumed an ancient name. Some of the school-fellows, as barbarians, invaded their ter- 
ritories, and attacked their hillocks or fortresses. The chiefs defended their respective do- 
mains against the incursions of the enemy; and in these imitative wars the joung states- 
men held councils ; all doubtless very boyish, but admirably calculated to fill their 
minds with ideas of legislation and civil government. In these amusements. Jones was 
ever the leader. 

In 1764, he was entered of University College, Oxford: here 
his taste for Oriental literature continued, and he enofaged a 
native of Aleppo, whom he had discovered in London, to act as 
his preceptor ; he also assiduously read the Greek poets and 
historians. After the completion of his academical career, 
through his intimacy with Dr. Sumner and Dr. Parr, Jones re- 
turned to Harrow as private tutor to Lord Althorpe, after- 
ward Earl Spencer. A fellowship of Oxford was also conferred 
upon him. 

Sir W. Jones, in addition to great acquirements in other de- 
partments of knowledge, made himself acquainted with no fewer 
than twenty-eight different languages. He was from his boy- 
hood a miracle of industry. He used to relate that when he 
was only three or four years of age, if he applied to his mother, 
a woman of uncommon intelligence and acquirements, for in- 
formation upon any subject, her constant answer to him was, 
" Read, and you will know." He thus acquired a passion for 
books, which only grew in strength with increasing years. Even 
at school his voluntary exertions exceeded in amount his pre- 
scribed tasks ; and Dr. Thackeray, one of his masters, was wont 
to say of him, that he was a boy of so active a mind, that if he 
were left naked and friendless upon Salisbury Plain, he would 
nevertheless find the road to fame and riches. At this time he 
often devoted whole nights to study, when he generally took 
coffee or tea to keep off sleep. To divert his leisure, he com- 
menced the study of the law ; and he is said to have often sur- 
prised his mother's legal acquaintances by putting cases to them 
from an abridgment of Coke's Institutes, which he had read and 
mastered. In after-life his maxim was never to neglect any 
opportunity of improvement which presented itself. In con- 
formity with this rule, while making the most wonderful exer- 
tions in the study of Greek, Latin, and the Oriental languages, 



23 1 School-Days of Eminent Men. 

at Oxford, he took advantage of the vacations to learn riding 
and fencing, and to read all the best authors in Italian, Spanish, 
Portuguese, and French ; thus — to transcribe an observation of 
his own — " with the fortune of a peasant, giving himself the 
education of a prince." 

When in his thirty-third year, Sir William Jones resolved, as 
appears from a scheme of study found among his papers, "to 
learn no more rudiments of any kind ; but to perfect himself in, 
first, twelve languages, as the means of acquiring accurate knowl- 
edge of history, arts, and sciences." These were the Greek, 
Latin, Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Hebrew," Arabic, 
Persian, Turkish, German, and English : but he eventually ex- 
tended his researches beyond even these ample limits. He made 
himself not only completely master of Sanscrit, as well as less 
completely af Hindostanee and Bengalee, but to a considerable 
extent also of the other Indian dialects. The languages which 
he describes himself to have studied least perfectly °were the 
Chinese, Russian, Runic, Syrian, Ethiopic, Coptic, Dutch, Swe- 
dish, and Welsh. Yet, Sir William Jones died at the early ix<rQ 
of forty-seven. ° 

HOW DR. PARR BECAME A PARSON INSTEAD OF A SURGEON. 

Samuel Parr was born at Harrow-on-the-Hill, in 1747, where 
his father was a surgeon and apothecary. It was the accident 
of his birihplace that laid the foundation of his ftime; for he was 
sent to the grammar-school at Harrow in his sixth year. In his 
boyhood he wrs studious after a fashion, delighting in Mother 
Goose and the Seven Champions, and little caring for boyish 
sports. One day he was seen sitting on the churchyard gate at 
Harrow, with great gravity, whilst his school-fellows were all at 
play. " Sam, why don't you play with the others ?" cried a 
friend. " Do not you know, sir," said Parr, with vast solemnity, 
" that I am to be a parson ?" When nine or ten years old, he 
would put on one of his father's shirts for a surplice, and read 
the church service to his sisters and cousins, after they had been 
duly summoned by a bell tied to the banisters ; preach them a 
sermon ; and even in spite of his father's remonstrance, would 
bury a bird or a kitten (Parr had always a great fondness for 
animals), with the rites of Christian burial. At school, his 
masters predicted his future eminence; but, at the age of 14, 
when he was at the head of the school, he w^as removed from it, 
and placed in his father's shop. Here he criticised the Latin of 
the apothecary's prescriptions, and sliowed great dislike of the 
business ; while he continued his classical studies, by getting one 
of his former companions to report to him the master's remarks 



Anecdote Biographies, 235 

on the lesson of every day, as it was read ; and Parr, having in 
vain tried to reconcile himself to the business for three years, 
was, at length, sent to Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he 
studied hard in the classics and philology. Soon after, his father 
died, and he was compelled, before he had taken a degree, to 
relinquish his academic career, when he became an under-master 
of Harrow School. He now took deacon's orders : he continued 
assistant-master at Harrow five years, when he became a candi- 
date for the head-mastership, but was defeated: a rebellion en- 
sued among the boys, many of whom took Parr's part, and he 
withdrew to Stanmore, a village in the neighborhood, where he 
set up a school, followed by 40 of the young rebels. Here en- 
sued many disappointments and struggles with misfortune, which 
did not, however, prevent Parr from becoming one of the great- 
est scholars of his time. 

Parr himself used to tell of Sir William Jones, another of his 
school-fellows, that as they were one day walking together near 
Harrow, Jones suddenly stopped short, and looking hard at him, 
cried out, "Parr, if you should have the good luck to live forty 
years, you may stand a chance of overtaking your face." 

Dr. Parr quitted Cambridge with deep regret. 

" I left Emmanuel Tollege (lie says), as must not be dissembled, before the usual time, and 
in truth had been almost compelled to leave it, not by the want ol a proper euucation, for 
I had arrived in the first place of the first form of Harrow School when I was not quite 
fourteen ; not for the want of useful tutors, for mine were eminently able, and to me had 
been uniformly kind; not for the want of ambition, for I had begun to look up ardently 
and anxiously to academical distinctions ; not for the want of attachment to the place, for 
I regarded it then, as I continue to regard it now, with the fondest and most unfeigned 
affection ; but by another want which it was unnecessary to name, and for the supply of 
•which, after some hesitation, I determined to provide by patient toil and resolute self- 
denial, when I had not completed my twentieth year. I ceased, therefore, to reside, with an 
aching heart ; I looked back with mingled feelings of regret and humiliation to advant- 
ages of which I could no longer partake, and honors to which 1 could no longer aspire. 
The unreserved conversation of scholars, the disinterested ofiices of friendship, the use of 
valuable books, and the example of good men, are endearments by which Cambridge will 
keep a strong hold upon my esteem, my respect, and my gratitude to the last moment of 
my life." 

Dr. Parr has left this striking illustration, enjoining upon 
children Tenderness to Animals : 

" He that can look with rapture upon the agonies of an unoffending and unresisting 
animal, will soon learn to view the sufferings of a fellow-creature with indifference ; and 
in time he will acquire the power of viewing them with triumph, if that fellow-creature 
should become the victim of his resentment, be it just or unjust. But the minds of chil- 
dren are open to impressions of every sort, and, indeed, wonderful is the facility with 
which a judicious instructor may habituate them to tender emotions. I have, therefore, 
always considered mercy to beings of an inferior species as a virtue which children are 
very capable of learning, but wliich is most difficult to be taught if the heart has been 
once familiarized to spectacles of distress, and has been permitted either to behold the 
pangs of any living creature with cold insensibility, or to inflict them with wanton bar- 
barity." 



236 ScTiool-Days of Eminent Men, 



LORDS ELDON AND STOWELL AT NEWCASTLE AND OXFORD. 

John Scott, Earl of Eldon, the greatest lawyer of his time, 
and Lord High Chancellor of England for seven-and-twentj 
years, was the son of Mr. John Scott, coalfitter, in Newcastle- 
upon-Tyne, arid was born in that town in 1751. His elder 
brother, Lord Stowell, was born in 1645, under circumstances of 
some peculiarity, which had a remarkable effect on the fortunes 
of the two brothers in after-life. The story is thus told : 

In 1745, the city of Edinburgh having surrendered to the Pretender's army, his road to 
London lay through Newcastle, the town-walls of which bristled with cannon, and the 
place was otherwise prepared for a siege. Mrs Scott was, at that time, in such a condi- 
tion as made her anxiou-* to be removed to a more quiet place. This, however, was a matter 
of some diflRculty ; for Mr. Scott's house was situated in one of the narrow lanes of New- 
castle, between which and the river Tyne ran the town-wall, the gates of which were closed 
and fortified. In this dilemma, Mrs Scott was placed in a basket, and, by aid of a rope, 
hoisted over the wall to the water-side, whence a boat conveyed htr to Ilawortii, a village 
about four miles from Newcastle, but on tlie southern bank of the Tyne : and hnre, within 
about two days after the above removal, Mrs. Scott gave birth to the twins, \\ illiam and 
Barbara. 

Lord Stowell having been thus born in the county of Dur- 
ham, was eligible for a scholarship, which fell vacant for that 
diocese, in Corpus Christi College, Oxford, which he succeeded 
in obtaining ; and thus laid the foundation, not only of his own, 
but of his still more successful brother's prosperity. 

Lord Eldon was carefully educated at home, after the fashion 
of the old school, the birch being freely applied, especially for 
his habit of telling direct untruths, but without effecting contri- 
tion for the offense. This is stated upon the authority of his 
anecdote-book, where he recounts sundry instances of sturdy 
lying, apparently with some pride ; yet, there was constant 
serious observance at home. "I believe," said Lord Eldon, "I 
have preached more sermons than any one that is not a clergy- 
man. My father always had the Church Service read on the 
Sunday evenings, and a sermon after it. Harry and I used to 
take it in turns to read the prayers or to preach : we always had 
a shirt put over our clothes to answer for a surplice." 

John and William were sent to the free grammar-school at 
Newcastle,* where John seems to have been noted as a lad of 
great abilities, and to have indicated early that constant activity 
of mind which was his characteristic throughout life. On their 
teacher in the school, the Rev. Hugh Moises, the Scotts appear 
to have produced a feeling of very deep and lasting affection. 
With great pride did the provincial schoolmaster watch the ris- 
ing footsteps of his two favorite pupils; and, to do them justice, 

* At this school, founded and endowed by the Mayor of Newcastle, in 1525, Bishop 
Ridley, the poet Akenside, Lord Collingwood, and other eminent persons, received the 
earlier part of their education. 



Anecdote Biograpldes. 237 

they seem to have reciprocated the attachment. Lord Eldon 
kept up his correspondence with his old preceptor, amid all the 
honors and distinctions which future years showered on him. 
One of the first acts of his Chancellorship was to make Mr. 
Moises one of his chaplains. He twice afterward offered him 
still more substantial preferment ; this the old man declined, but 
the patronage w-as bestowed upon his family. 

Lord Stowell having gone to Oxford, and commenced his 
career with great success, it was intended that John should fol- 
low his father's occupation. His brother, however, who knew 
his great abilities, would not allow them to be so buried. " Send 
Jack here," he wrote from Oxford; "I can do better for him." 
And to Oxford Jack was sent- accordingly, and entered as a com- 
moner of University College, in the year 1766, under the tutor- 
ship of his brother. 

The only distinction which Lord Eldon acquired at Oxford, 
was gaining the Lichfi'dd prize by an "Essay on the Advantages 
and Disadvanta"res of Foreio;n Travel." He took his Bachelor's 
degree, and intended to prosecute his studies for the Church. 
But an event, fortunately as it turned out, averted the whole 
current of his life. He fell in love with the daughter of a towns- 
man of his father's, and we trace half-stifled lamentations in his 
letters to his companions from Oxford. At last, he eloped with 
the lady to Scotland : the relations were highly displeased with 
the match, and the fortunes of the bridegroom were supposed to 
be so completely marred by this exploit, that a wealthy grocer 
in Newcastle offered to his father to take him into partnership, 
as the only means of establishing him respectably. The pro- 
posal was so far entertained as to be referred to William Scott 
for his opinion ; but his answer in the negative preserved his 
brother for greater things. Lord Eldon's marriage, however, 
rendered it impossible for him to prosecute his views toward the 
church with any chance of success, unless a living should fall 
vacant to his College during the first year : he accordingly 
resolved to turn himself to the law, and entered in the Middle 
Temple, in January, 1773. The year of grace passed without 
any College living becoming vacant, and thus was his destiny 
conclusively fixed. While keeping his terms in the Temple, he 
continued his residence at Oxford, assiduously prosecuting his 
legal studies, and employed partly as tutor of University College, 
during 1774-75, and partly as Deputy Professor of Law, for 
which service he received 60/. a year. He relates that imme- 
diately after he was married, the Law Professor sent him the first 
lecture to read immediately to the students, and this he began 
without knowing a single word that was in it. It was upon the 



238 School-JDays of Eminent Men. 

statute of young men running away with young maidens. " Fancy 
me," he says, "reading, with about one hundred and forty boys 
and young men all giggling at the Professor. Such a tittering 
audience no one ever had !" 

Lord Eldon well remembered Johnson in college at Oxford. 
He relates of the Doctor : 

" If put out of tempe-, he was not very moderate in the terms in which he expressed 
his displeasure. I remember that in the common-room of University College, lie was dila- 
ting upon some subject, and the then head of Lincoln College, Dr Mortimer, was present. 
AV'hilst Johnson was stating what he proposed to communicate, the Doctor occasionally 
interrupted him, saying, ' I deny that I' This was often repeated, and observed upon by 
Johnson, as it was repeated, in terms expressive of exceeding displeasure and anger. At 
length, upon the Doctor^s repeating the words ' I deny that,' 'Sir, sir,' said Johnson, 
'you must have forgot that an author has said. Plus negabit unus asimis in una hora, 
quam centum pliilosopki probaverint in centum annis.' " 

Lord Eldon finally removed to London in 1775, but with 
gloomy pro.«pects, being almost without a sixpence he could call 
his own, and receiving little attention from his father and other 
relations. Indeed, the generosity and kindness of his brother 
William, for which in after-life he was always deeply grateful, 
were chiefly instrumental in enabling him to prosecute his views 
for the bar. He first lived in Cursitor-street, of which he used 
to say: "Many a time have I run down from Cursitor-street to 
Fleet-market, to get sixpenny worth of sprats for supper." Lord 
Eldon was called to the bar in 1776. He waited long in vain 
for clients, and had resolved to quit Westminster Hall, to seek 
his native city; when the accident of a leading counsel's sudden 
indisposition introduced him to the notice of the profession, and 
his success at the bar became thenceforth certain.* 

THE TWO BROTHERS MILNER. 

These eminent churchmen were originally Yorkshire weavers, 
but were, by fortuitous circumstances, well educated. Joseph 
Milner, born in 1744, was sent to the grammar-school at Leeds, 
where, by his industry and talents, among which a memory of 
most extraordinary power was conspicuous, he gained the warm 
regard of his instructor, who resolved to have him sent to 
college. This plan was nearly frustrated by the death of Milner's 
father, in very narrow circumstances ; but by the assistance of 
some gentlemen in Leeds, whose children Milner had lately 
engaged in teaching, he was sent to Catherine Hall, Cambridge, 
at the age of 18. He afterward became head-master of Hull 

* At Vauxhall, a Public School for 140 boys wasfounded in 1829, by Mr. Charle.s Fran- 
cis, of Belgrave House, "to perpetuate the memory of the Earl of Eldon, and to commem- 
orate his able, zealous, and constant defense of the Protestant Reformed Religion against 
every innovauon " The School-house, a Tudor building, is adorned with a statue of Lord 
Eldon, upon the anniversary of whose birthday, June 4. the public examination of the 
boys takes place. 



Anecdote Biographies, 239 

grammar-school, and vicar of that parish, and wrote many 
learned works, of which his History of the Church of Christ is 
the principal. 

His brother, Isaac Milner, Dean of Carlisle, born in 1751, at 
the age of six accompanied him to the Leeds grammar-school ; 
but at iiis father's death, he was taken away to learn the woolen 
manufacture. When Joseph Milner was appointed to the head- 
mastership of the Hull grammar-school, he released his brother 
from his engagements at Leeds, and took him under his own 
tuition, employing him as his assistant in teaching the younger 
boys. In the Life of his brother, the Dean expresses his sense 
of this kindness with affectionate warmth. In 1770, Isaac 
Milner entered Queen's College, Cambridge : here he rose to be 
Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, and he was twice Vice- 
Chancellor. He became the intimate friend of Mr. Wilberforce 
and Mr. Pitt. He was a man of extensive and accurate learn- 
ing ; wrote several works ; and greatly assisted his brother 
Joseph in his History of the Church. 

HOW WILLIAM GIFFORD BECAME A SCHOLAR AND CRITIC. 

William Gifford, the eminent critic, was born in 1755, at 
Ashburton, in Devonshire ; and by the early death of both 
parents, was left, at the age of 13, penniless, homeless, and 
friendless. He had learned reading, writing, and a little arith- 
metic, when his godfather took charge of him, sent him again to 
school ; but just as Gifford was making considerable progress in 
artithmetic, his patron grew tired of the expense, and took him 
home to employ him as a plow-boy, for which, however, he was 
unfit. It was next resolved that he should be sent to Newfound- 
land to assist in a storehouse ; but for this he was declared " too 
small." He was then sent as a cabin-boy, on board a coasting 
vessel, where he remained about a twelvemonth, during which 
time the only book he saw was the " Coasting Pilot." His god- 
father then took him home, and sent him again to school, where, 
in a few months, he became head boy. His godfather now- 
thought he "had learned enough, and more than enough, at 
school," and apprenticed him to a shoemaker at Ashburton. 
But Gifford's strono; thirst for knowleds^e had not abated : raathe- 
matics at first were his favorite study ; and he relates that, for 
want of paper, he used to hammer scraps of leather smooth, and 
w^ork his problems on them with a blunt awl : for the rest, his 
memory was tenacious, and he could multiply and divide by it to 
a great extent. His master finding his services worth nothing, 
used harsh means to wean him from his literary tastes ; and 
Gifford, hating his business, sank into a sort of savage melan- 



240 Scliool-Bays of Eminent Men. 

choly. From this state he was withdrawn by the active kind- 
ness of Mr. Cookesly, a surgeon, of Ashburton, who had seen 
some rhymes by Gifford, and with his sad story, conceived a 
strong regard for him, and raised "a subscription for purchasing 
the remainder of the time of William Gifford, and for enabling 
him to improve himself in writing and English grammar." 
Enough was collected to free him from his apprenticeship ; he 
was placed at school, and in two years sent to Exeter College, 
Oxford. Not long after, Mr. Cookesley died ; but a more effi- 
cient patron was raised up in Earl Grosvenor, who gave Gifford 
a home in his own mansion. A long and prosperous life fol- 
lowed : he executed translations of Latin poets ; edited the works 
of Massinger, Ben Jonson, Ford, and Shirley ; and was appoint- 
ed editor of the Quarterly Review upon its first establishment. 
He died in 1826, leaving the bulk of his fortune to the son of 
his first patron, Mr. Cookesley. 

LORD nelson's SCHOOLS IN NORFOLK. 

Horatio Nelson was born with a quick good sense, an affec- 
tionate heart, and a high spirit, by which qualities his boyhood 
was strongly marked. He was the fifth son and the sixth child 
of Edmund and Catherine Nelson ; his birth took place in 1758, 
in the parsonage-house of Burnham Thorpe, a village in the 
county of Norfolk, of which his father was rector. The maiden 
name of his mother was Suckling ;* her grandmother was an 
elder sister of Sir Robert Walpole, and this child was named 
after his godfather, the first Lord Walpole. Horatio "was 
never of a strong body," says Southey; "and the ague, which 
was at that time one of the most common diseases in England, 
had greatly reduced his strength ;" yet he very early gave proofs 
of that resolute heart and nobleness of mind which, during his 
whole career of labor and of glory, so eminently distinguished 
him. When a mere child, he strayed a bird's-nesting from his 
grandmother's house, in company with a cow-boy ; the dinner- 
hour elapsed, he was absent, and could not be found ; when the 
alarm of the family became very great, for they apprehended 
that he might have been carried off by gipsies. At length, after 
search had been made for him in various directions, he was dis- 
covered alone, sitting composedly by the side of a brook which 
he could not get over. "I wonder, child," said the old lady 
when she saw him, "that hunger and fear did not drive you 
home." "Fear! grandmamma," replied the future hero; "I 
never saw fear — what is it?" 

* A descendant of Sir John Suckling, the poet. One of the family married a descendant 
of Inigo Jones. 



Anecdote Biographies. 241 

Nelson was first sent to a small school at Downham ; and in 
the market-place, as often as he could get there, he might be 
seen, working awaj, in his little green coat, at the pump, till, bj 
the help of his school-fellows, a sufficient pond was made for 
floating the little ship which he had cut with a knife, and rigged 
with a paper sail. An incident, showing Nelson's compassionate 
disposition, is related of him at this age. A shoemaker of Down- 
ham had a pet-lamb, which he kept in his shop ; and one daj 
Nelson accidentally jammed the animal between the door and the 
door-post, when the little fellow's sorrow for the pain he had 
unwittingly inflicted was excessive, and for some time uncon- 
trollable. 

Horatio was next sent, with his brother William, to a larger 
school at North Walsham, where another characteristic incident 
occurred. There were some fine pears growing in the school- 
master's garden, which the boys regarded as lawful booty, and 
in the highest degree tempting ; but the boldest among them was 
afraid to venture for the fruit. Horatio volunteered upon the 
service : he was lowered down at night from the bed-room win- 
dow by some sheets, he plundered the tree, and was drawn up 
with the pears, which he distributed among his school-fellows, 
without reserving any for himself — "I only took them," he said, 
"because every other boy was afraid." 

Nelson's mother died in 17G7, leaving eight out of eleven 
children. Her brother, Captain Maurice Suckling, of the Navy, 
visited the widow upon this event, and promised to take care of 
one of the boys. Three years afterward, when Horatio was 
only twelve years of age, being at home for the Christmas holi- 
days, he read in the county newspaper that his uncle was appoin- 
ted to the Raisonnahle, of 64 guns. " Do, William," said he to 
a brother who was a year and a half older than himself, " write 
to my father, and tell him that I should like to go to sea with 
uncle Maurice." Mr. Nelson was then at Bath : his circum- 
stances were straitened, and he knew that it was the wish of 
providing for himself by which Horatio was chiefly actuated ; 
he did not oppose his resolution ; he understood the boy's char- 
acter, and had always said that in whatever station he might be 
placed, he would climb, if possible, to the very top of the tree. 
Accordingly, Captain Suckling was written to: "What," said 
he, in his answer, "has poor Horatio done, who is so weak, that 
he, above all the rest, should be sent to rough it out at sea? — 
But let him come, and the first time we go into action, a cannon- 
ball may knock off his head, and provide for him at once." 

The brothers returned to their school at North Walsham. Not 
16 



242 School-Days of Eminent Men, 

long after, early on a cold and dark spring morning, Mr. Nelson's 
servant arrived with the expected summons for Horatio to join 
his ship. The parting from his brother William, who had been 
so long his playmate, was a painful effort. He accompanied his 
father to London. The Raisonnahle was lying in the Medway. 
He was put into the Chatham stage, and on its arrival was set 
down with the rest of the passengers, and left to find his way on 
board as he could. After wandering about in the cold without 
being able to reach the ship, an officer, observing the forlorn 
appearance of the boy, questioned him ; and happening to be 
acquainted with his uncle, took him home and gave him some 
refreshment. When he got on board. Captain Suckling was not 
in the ship, nor had any person been apprised of the boy's coming. 
He paced the deck the whole remainder of the day, without 
being noticed by any one ; and it was not till the second day that 
somebody, as he expressed it, "took compassion on him." Mr. 
Southey feelingly adds: 

'' The pain which is felt when we are first transplanted from our native soil, when the 
living branch is cut from the parent tree, is one of the m- st poignant griefs which we have 
to endure through life. There are Safter-griefi which wound more deeplj', which leave 
l)ehind them scars never to be effaced', which bruise the spirit, and sometimes break the 
heart : but never do we feel so keenly the want of love, the necesfity of being loved, and 
the sense of utter desertion, as when we first leave the haven of home, and are, as it 
were, pushed off upon the stream of life. Added to these feelings, the sea-boy has to 
endure phys^ical hardships, and the privation of every comfort, even of sleep. Nelson had 
a feeble body and an affectionate heart, and he remembered through life his first days of 
wretchedness in the service. 

In Arthur's Life of the hero, we have Nelson's own account 
of his birth and early life: "I was born Sept. 29th, 1758, in 
the parsonage-house ; was sent to the High-school at Norwich, 
and afterward removed to Northway, from whence, on the dis- 
turbance with Spain relative to the Falkland Islands, I went to 
sea with my uncle, Captain Maurice Suckling, in the Raisonnahle^ 
of 64 guns ; but the business with Spain being accommodated, I 
was sent in a West India ship belonging to the house of Hibbert 
Furrier Horton, with Mr. John Rathbone, who had formerly 
been in the navy, in the Dreadnought^ with Captain Suckling. 
From this voyage 1 returned to the Triumph, at Chatham, in 
July, 1772 ; and if I did not improve in my education, I returned 
a practical seaman, with a horror of the Royal Navy, and with 
a saying, then constant with the seamen — ^Aft the most honor^ 
forward the better man^ " 

Such was the start in life of one of the greatest heroes in the 
annals of British history, or perhaps in the annals of the world, 
whose great deeds are so numerous, splendid, and important as 
to "confound the biographer with excess of light" and whose 
death was felt in England as a public calamity; "yet," says 



Anecdote Biographies, 243 

Southey, " he cannot be said to have fallen prematurely w'ho€^ 
work was done, or ought he to be lamented who died so full of 
honors, and at the height of human fame." 

ROBERT BURNS, "THE AYRSHIRE PLOWMAN." 

Robert Burns, w^hom his countrymen delight to honor as the 
Shakspeare of Scotland, was born in 1759, in the parish of 
Alloway, near Ayr. His father was a poor farmer, who gave 
his son what education he could afford. Burns tells us that 
"though it cost the schoolmaster some thrashings," he made an 
excellent English scholar ; and by the time he was ten or eleven 
years of age, he was a critic in substantives, verbs, and particles. 
In his infant and boyish days, too, he w^as much with an old 
woman who resided in the family, and was remarkable for her 
ignorance, credulity, and superstition. She had the largest col- 
lection in the country of tales and songs concerning demons, 
ghosts, fairies, brownies, witches, kelpies, elf-candles, dead-lights, 
wraiths, apparitions, cantraips, giants, enchanted towers, dragons^ 
and other trumpery. This cultivated the latent seeds of poetry, 
but had so strong an effect on Burns's imagination, that after he 
had grown to manhood, in his nocturnal rambles he sometimes 
kept a sharp look-out in suspicious places, and it often took an 
effort of philosophy to shake off these idle terrors.* He says : 
"The earliest composition that I recollect taking pleasure in, 
was The Vision of Mirza, and a hymn of Addison's, beginning, 
*How are thy servants blest, O Lord!' I particularly remem- 
ber one stanza, which was music to my boyish ear: 

' For though on dreadful whirls we hung 
High on the broken wave.' 

I met with these pieces in Mason's English Collection, one of my 
school-books. The two first books I ever read in private, and 
which gave me more pleasure than any two books I ever read 
since, were The Life of Hannihal, and The History of Sir 
William Wallace. Hannibal gave my young ideas such a turn, 
that I used to strut in rapture up and down after the recruiting 
drum and bagpipe, and wish myself tall enough to be a soldier; 
while the story of Wallace poured a Scottish prejudice into my 
veins, which will boil along there till the flood-gates of life shut 
in eternal rest." 

While Burns lived on his father's little farm, he tells us that he 
was, perhaps, the most ungainly, awkward boy in the parish. 
He continues: 

*See the Life and Works of Robert Burns. Library Edition. Edited by Robert 
Chambers. 



i 



244 SchooUJDays of Eminent Men. 

" What I knew of ancient story was gathered from Salmon's and Guthrie's Geographical 
Grammars; and the ideas I formed of modern manners, literature, and criticism, I got 
from the Spectator. These, with Pope's Wi:rks, some Ploys of Shakspeare, Tull and Dick- 
eon on Agriculture, the Pantheon. Locke On the Human Understanding, Stackhouse'a 
History of the Bib e, Justice's British Gardenerls Directory, Bayle's Lectures, Allan Ram- 
say's Works, Taylor's Scripture Doctnne of Original Sin, A Select Collection </ English 
Songs, and Hervey's Meditations, had formed the whole of my reading. The Collection 
of Songs was my vade-mecum. I pored over them driving my cart, or walking to labor, 
song by song, verse by verse— carefully noting the true, tender, and sublime, from affecta- 
tion and fustian. I am convinced I owe to this practice much of my critic craft, such aa 
i% is." 

Burns's father was a man of uncommon intelligence for his 
station in life, and was anxious that his children should have the 
best education which their circumstances admitted of. Robert 
was, therefore, sent in his sixth year to a little school at Alloway 
Mill, about a mile from their cottage : not long after, his father 
took a lead in establishing a young teacher, named John Mur- 
doch, in a humble temple of learning, nearer hand, and there 
Robert and his younger brother, Gilbert, attended for some time. 
" With him," says Gilbert, " we learned to read English tolerably 
well, and to write a little. He taught us, too, the English 
Grammar. I was too young to profit much from his lessons in 
grammar, but Robert made some proficiency in it ; a circum- 
stance of considerable weight in the unfolding of his genius and 
character, as he soon became remarkable for the fluency and cor- 
rectness of his expression, and read the few books that came in 
his way with much pleasure and improvement ; for even then 
he was a reader when he could get a book." Gilbert next men- 
tions that 2'he Life of Wallace, which Robert Burns refers to, 
'^he borrowed from the blacksmith who shod our horses." 

The poet was about seven years of age when (1766) his father 
left the clay higging at Alloway, and settled in the small upland 
farm at Mount Oliphant, about two miles distant. He and his 
younger brother continued to attend Mr. Murdoch's school for 
two years longer, when it was broken up. Murdoch took his 
leave of the boys, and brought, as a present and memorial, a 
small compendium of English Grammar, and the tragedy of Titus 
Andronicus; he began to read the play aloud, but so shocked 
was the party at some of its incidents, that Robert declared if 
the play were left, he would burn it ; and Murdoch left the com- 
edy of the School for Love in its place. 

The father now instructed his two sons, and other children : 
there were no boys of their own age in the neighborhood, and 
their father was almost their only companion : he conversed with 
them as though they were men ; he taught them from Salmon's 
Geographical Grammar the situation and history of the different 
countries of the world ; and from a book-society in Ayr he pro- 
cured Durham's Physico and Astro Theology, and Ray's Wisdom 



Anecdote Biographies, 245 

of God in the Creation, to give his sons some idea of astronomy 
and natural history. Robert read all these books with an avidity 
and industry scarcely to be equaled. From Stackhouse's His- 
tory/ of the Bible, then lately published in Kilmarnock, Robert 
collected a competent knowledge of ancient history ; "for," says 
his brother, "no book was so voluminous as to slacken his indus- 
try, or so antiquated as to damp his researches." About this 
time a relative inquired at a bookseller's shop in Ayr for a book 
to teach Robert to write letters, when, instead of the Complete 
Letter Writer, he got by mistake a small collection of letters by 
the most eminent WTiters, with a few sensible directions for attain- 
ing an easy epistolary style, which book proved to Burns of the 
greatest consequence. 

Burns was about thirteen or fourteen, when, his father regret- 
ting that he and his brother wrote so ill, to remedy this defect 
sent them to the parish school of Dalrymple, between two and 
three miles distant, the nearest to them. Murdoch, the boys' 
former master, now settled in Ayr, as a teacher of the English 
language : he sent them Pope's Works, and some other poetry, 
the first they had an opportunity of reading, except that in the 
English Collection, and in the Edinburgh Magazine for 1772. 
Robert was now sent to Ayr, "to revise his English gram- 
mar with his former teacher," but he was shortly obliged to 
return to assist in the harvest. He then learned surveying at 
the parish school of Kirkoswald. He had learned French of 
Murdoch, and could soon read and understand any French 
author in prose. He then attempted to learn Latin, but soon 
gave it up. Mrs. Paterson, of Ayr, now lent the boys the 
Spectator, Pope's Translation of Homer, and several other books 
that were of use to them. 

Thus, although Robert Burns was the child of poverty and 
toil, there were fortunate circumstances in his position : his par- 
ents were excellent persons ; his father exerted himself as his 
instructor, and, cottager a^ he w^as, contrived to have something 
like the benefits of private tuition for his two eldest sons ; and 
the young poet became, comparatively speaking, a well-educated 
man. His father had remarked, from a very early period, the 
bright intellect of his elder-born in particular, saying to his wife, 
" Whoever may live to see it, something extraordinary will come 
from that boy !" 

It was not until his tw^enty-third year that Burns's reading w^as 
enlarged by the addition of Thomson, Shenstone, Sterne, and 
Mackenzie. Other standard works soon followed. The great 
advantage of his learning was, that what books he had, he read 
and studied thoroughly — his attention w^as not distracted by a 



246 School-Days of Eminent Men, 

multitude of volumes, and his mind grew up with original and 
robust vigor ; and in the veriest shades of obscurity, he toiled, 
wiien a mere youth, to support his virtuous parents and their 
household ; yet all this time he grasped at every opportunity of 
acquiring knowledge from men and books. 

Burns, says Mr. Carruthers, came as a potent auxiliary or 
fellow-worker with Cowper, in bringing poetry into the channels 
of truth and nature. There were only two years between the 
Tashy and the Cotter's Saturday Night. No poetry was ever 
more instantaneously or universally popular among a people 
than that of Burns in Scotland. There was the humor of 
Smollett, the pathos and tenderness of Sterne or Richardson, the 
real life of Fielding, and the description of Thomson — all 
united in the delineations of Scottish manners and scenery by 
the Ayrshire plowman. His master-piece is Tam o'Shanter: it 
was so considered by himself, and the judgment has been 
confirmed by Campbell, "Wilson, Montgomery, and by almost 
every critic. 

RICHARD PORSON, "THE NORFOLK BOY," AT HAPPESBURGH, 
ETON, AND CAMBRIDGE. 

Richard Porson was born in 1759, at East Ruston, near North 
Walsham, Norfolk : he was the eldest son of the parish-clerk of 
the place, who was a worsted-weaver, and is described as clever 
in his way. Porson's mother was the daughter of a shoemaker : 
she was shre>vd and lively, and had considerable literary taste, 
being familiar with Shakspeare and other standard English 
authors, from her access to a library in a gentleman's house 
where she lived servant. 

Porson, when a boy, was put to the loom at once, and prob- 
ably helped his mother in the corn-fields in harvest-time. He 
was next sent to the neighboring school of Happesburgh, the 
master of which was a good Latin scholar. When the father 
took his son to school, he said to the master : " I have brought 
my boy Richard to you, and just want him to make {sic) his own 
name, and then I shall take him into the loom." The master, 
however, took great pains with the boy, making him at night 
repeat the lessons he had learnt during the day, aud thus, prob- 
ably, laid the foundatioii of Porson's unrivaled memory. He 
had previously been for a short time at a school at Bacton, but 
was unable to bear the rough treatment of the boys. At Hap- 
pesburgh, he learnt rapidly — especially arithmetic, of which he 
continued all his life very fond ; and his penmanship was very 
skillful. His memory was wonderful : he would repeat a lesson 
which he had learnt one or two years before, and had never seen 



Anecdote Biographies. 247 

in the interim. He had only such books as his father's cottage 
supplied — a volume or two of Arithmetic, Greenwood's England, 
Jewell's Apology ; an odd volume of Chambers's CyclopcBdia, 
picked up from a wrecked coaster; and eight or ten volumes of 
the Universal Magazine. 

The remarkable aptitude of Person soon became noticed: at 
the age of eleven, Mr. Hewitt, the curate of East Ruston, took 
charge of his education, and continued to instruct him till the 
age of thirteen, w^hen his fame as a youthful prodigy, through 
Mr. Hewitt, became known to Mr. Norris, the founder of the 
Norrisian Professorship at Cambridge, who said, however : 
"Well, I see nothing particular in this heavy-looking boy, but 
I confide in your account of his talents." Porson was then 
sent to Cambridge, where the Greek Professor, and three tutors 
of Trinity College, having examined him, reported of him so 
favorably that Mr. Norris had him entered on the foundation at 
Eton, in 1774. 

Hr. Hewitt, writing to the Cambridge Professor, speaks of 
having had " the orderly and good boy under his care for almost 
two years, chiefly on Corderius's Colloquies, Caesar, Ovid, Horace, 
and Virgil, and Mathematics. In Greek he was only learning 
the verbs." * 

Of his Eton days, Porson only recollected with pleasure the 
rat-hunts in the Long Chamber. His promise of excellence 
appears at this time to have rather diminished: his composition 
was weak, and his ignorance of quantity kept him behind bis in- 
feriors in other respects. He was also prone to conceit in his 
verses, and fond of mixing Greek with his Latin. He went too 
late to Eton to have any chance of succeeding to a scholarship 
at King's. He was popular among his school-fellows, and two 
dramas which he wrote for performance in the Long Chamber 
are still remembered. He seems, however, at first to have some- 
what disappointed his friends, as Lord Nelson's brother, who 
was at Eton with Porson, brought back word that they thought 
nothing of the Norfolk boy. At the same time, his unrivaled 
memory was noticed at school, and exemplified in the oft-repeat- 
ed story of his construing Horace from memory, when his book 
had been abstracted, and Ovid put in its place. And his promise 
must have been remarkable, as when he left Eton, contributions 
from Etonians to aid the funds for his maintenance at the Uni- 
versity were readily subscribed. 

At Eton he remained some four years, and in October, 1778, 

* These leading details of Person's life and career of learning have been selected and 
condensed from a very able paper by H. K. Luard, M.A., in the Cambridge EssaySy coU' 
tribuUU by Members of the University. 1857. 



248 School-Bays of Eminent Men, 

through the aid of Sir George Baker, the celebrated physician 
(Mr. Norris had died in the previous year), Porson became a 
member of Trinity College, Cambridge ; was elected Scholar in 
1780, and Craven University Scholar in 1781. Next year he 
graduated as third senior op time, and obtained soon after the 
jSrst Chancellor's medal; and in the same year he was elected 
Fellow of Trinity, a very unusual thing at that time for a Junior 
Bachelor of Arts. He seems to have begun his critical career 
while an undergraduate, and it was, doubtless, during his resi- 
dence at Cambridge that he laid up his marvelous stores of 
learning for future use. He now turned his thoughts to pub- 
lication ; and is said to have first appeared in print in a short 
critique on Schutz's ^schylus, in a review started by his friend 
Maty, a Fellow of Trinity, in 1783; and he contributed to this 
journal some four years, until it was discontinued. " His review 
of Brunck's Aristophanes is a striking specimen of that strong 
nervous English for which all Porson's writings are remarkable, 
and nowhere else are the chief excellencies and defects of the 
great comic poet so well summed up." But at this period, his 
chief attention was devoted to JEscliylus : his restoration of two 
passages in Plutarch and ^Eschylus, by each other's help, is one 
of the earliest as well as one of the most brilliant of all Porson's 
emendations. " If it be remembered that this was done by a 
young man at the age of twenty-three, it shows an amount of 
learning, mingled with the power of applying it, at that age, that 
it would be vain to seek elsewhere." {JI. R. Luard.) 

In 1786, Porson communicated to a new edition of Hutchin- 
son's Anabasis of Xenophon a few annotations which give the 
first specimen of that neat and terse style of Latin notes in which 
Porson was afterward to appear without a rival. They also 
show already his intimate acquaintance with his two favorite 
authors, Plato and Athen^us, and a familiarity with Eustathius's 
Commentary on Homer. Next year w^ere w^ritten his Notce 
breves prefixed to the Oxford reprint of Toup, which first made 
his name known, generally, as a critic of the highest rank. In 
the same year appeared the most perfect specimen of Porson's 
wonderful power of humor — the three panegyrical letters in the 
Gentleman^ s Magazine^ on Hawkins's Life of Johnson, in which 
wonderful compositions Porson's force of pleasantry and delicate 
touches of satire show his extensive acquaintance with the Eng- 
lish dramatists, especially with Shakspeare. The whole is an 
admirable specimen of Porson's peculiar ironical humor. 

Porson became better known by his series of Letters to Arch- 
deacon Travis, on the contested verse, 1 John v. 7 — in the words 
of Gibbon, " the most acute and accurate piece of criticism which 



I 



Aiiecdote Biographies, 249 

had appeared since the days of Bentley." Porson also gained 
great celebrity in the learned world by his discovery of the new 
canons respecting the Iambic metre of the Greek tragedians, 
which he announced in the preface to his second edition of the 
Hecuba of Euripides. 

We have not space to glance further at Person's masterly 
criticisms, or his classical contributions to periodical literature. 
He resigned his Fellowship through his religious opinions, and 
was subsequently supported by subscription. He was after- 
ward elected to the Kegiiis Professorship of Greek at Cam- 
bridge. 

Meanwhile, he lived in Chambers in Essex-court, Temple; 
and occasionally visited Dr. Goodall, at Eton ; and Dr. Parr. 
While at Hatton, he generally spent his mornings in the library, 
and in the evening would pour fourth from the rich stores of 
his memory pages of Barrow, whole letters of Richardson, 
whole scenes of Foote, recitations from Shakspeare, and ety- 
molo2:ies and dissertations on the roots of the Enfi;lish Ian- 
guage. His wonderful power of retaining accurately what he 
had read, and being able to produce it always when called for, 
never forsook him. Nothing came amiss to his memory: he 
would set a child right in his twopenny fable-book, repeat the 
whole of the moral tale of the Dean of Badajos, or a page 
of Athena^us on cups, or Eustathius on Homer. Sometimes he 
would recite forgotten Yauxhall songs, and spend hours in 
making charades or conundrums for ladies, with whom he was a 
great favorite. 

It has been observed of Porson by one who saw much of him, 
that to the manners of a gentleman, and the most gigantic powers 
of learning and criticism, he joined the inoffensiveness of a child ; 
and, among his many good qualities, one was, never to speak ill 
of the moral character of any man. 

It is not ditficult to trace in Person's habits of thought the in- 
fluence which the study of mathematics had upon him. He was 
to his dying day very fond of these studies. There are still pre- 
served many papers of his scribbled over with mathematical 
calculations ; and when the fit seized him in the street which 
caused his death, an equation was found in his pocket. 

Dr. Young has said of him, that "as far as regards the pos- 
session of a combination of the faculties which Porson did culti- 
vate, he appears to have been decidedly the most successful of 
any man on record in the same department." 

"To him chiefly," says Mr. Luard, in his excellent paper in 
the Cambridge Essays, "English scholarship (especially Cam- 
bridge scholarship) owes its accuracy and its certainty: and this 



250 School-Bays of Eminent Men, 

as a branch of education — as a substratum on -which to rest ' 
other branches of knowledge often infinitely more useful in them- 
selves — really takes as high a rank as any of those studies which — 
can contribute to form the character of a well-educated EnglishBI 
gentleman." 

How painful is it to add, that a man of such amiable nature 
and surpa>sing intellect should have been addicted for many 
years of his life to the degrading habit of hard-drinking. 

THE MARQUIS WELLESLEY AL ETON AND OXFORD. 

In the foremost rank of high scholarship at Eton is Richard 
Marquis Wellesley, the eldest son of the Earl of Mornington, 
"a person of talents and virtue, and his taste in music being cul- 
tivated in an extraordinary degree, he was the author of some 
beautiful compositions, which still retain their place in the favor 
of the musical world." Richard was born at Dangan Castle, in 
the county of Meath, in 17G0: his mother, a daughter of Lord 
Dungannon, lived to an extreme old age: "she saw all the 
glories of Hindostan, of Spain, and of Waterloo ; and left four 
sons sitting in the House of Lords, not by inheritance, but by 
merit raised to that proud eminence." * 

Richard, who, at his father's death, had nearly attained 
majority, was sent first to Harrow, and there took part in a great 
rebellion that had well nigh broken up the school. This occa- 
sioned his expulsion, and he then, in his 11th year, w^ent to 
Eton, where, says his biographer, Lord Brougham, " he was dis- 
tinguished above all the youths of his time." 

AVhen Dr Goodall, his cotemporary, and afterward Head-Master, was examined in IS'' 8, 
before the Education Committee of the House of Commons respectin'i the alleged passing 
over of Forson in giving promotion to King's College, he at once declared that the cele- 
brated Grecian was not by any means at the head of the Etonians of his day ; and being 
asked by me (as chairman) to name his superior, he at once said, Lord Wellesley. — Lives 
of Statesmfn, by Lord Brougham, who adds in a note, " Some of the Committee would 
have bad this struck out of the evidence, as not bearing upon the subject of the inquiry, 
the Abuse of Charities ; but the general voice was immediately pronounced in favor of re- 
taining it, as a small tribute of our great respect for Lord Wellesley ; and I know that he 
highly valued this tribute." 

Dr. Davis was Lord Wellesley's tutor when he entered Eton 
School ; and, in after-life, the Marquis described the Doctor to 
have always bestowed on his education the solicitude and affection 
of a kind parent. The pupil greatly excelled in classical studies: 
some of his verses in the Musce Etonenses have great merit, as 
examples both of pure Lalinity and poetical talent: the Lines 
on Bedlam, especially, are of distinguished excellence. Some 
of his Latin poems were published about this early period. 

* The Marquis Wellesley, Lord Maryborough, the Duke of Wellington, and Lord 
Cowley. 



Anecdote Biographies. 251 

On leaving Eton, Lord Wellesley went to Christchurch, Ox- 
ford, and here, under Dr. W. Jackson, afterward Bishop of 
Oxford, he continued his classical studies. His poem on the 
Death of Captain Cook showed how entirely he had kept up 
his school reputation: it justly gained the University prize. 
At college he formed with Lord Grenville a friendship which 
continued during their lives, and led to his intimacy with Lord 
Grenville's great kinsman, Mr. Pitt, upon their entering into 
public life.* Yet the young minister never deemed it worth 
while to promote Lord Wellesley, whose powers as a speaker 
were of a high order, and WMth whom Mr. Pitt lived on the 
most intimate footing. The trifling place of a junior Lord of the 
Treasury, and a member of the India Board, formed all the pre- 
ferment which he received before his appointment as Governor- 
General of India, although that important nomination sufficiently 
shows the hisrh estimate which Mr. Pitt had formed of his 
capacity. In 1781, before taking his degree. Lord AYellesley 
was called away to Ireland in consequence of the death of his 
father : subsequently he attended to the education of his younger 
brothers. Lord Wellesley (says Pearce, his biographer) "was 
deeply attached throughout his long life to Eton. Some of the 
latest productions of his lordship's pen were dedicated to his 
beloved Eton ; and in testimony of the strong affection which he 
entertained toward the place where he received his first impres- 
sions of literary taste, and in accordance with his desire ex- 
pressed before his death, his body was deposited in a vault of 
Eton Chapel." 

In his riper years, Lord Wellesley retained the same classical taste which had been ere 
ated at school and nurtured at college As late as a few weeks before his death, he amused 
himself with Latin verses, was constant in reading the Greek orators and poets, and cor- 
responded with the Bishop of Durham upon a favorite project which he had formed of learn- 

* When Mr. Pitt was a youth, some law-lord (could it be Lord Mansfield?) one morning 
paid a visit to Lord Chatham at his country residence. Whilst they were conversing, his 

son William came through the library. Lord asked who is that youth? Lord 

Chatham said, '' That is my second son — call him back and talk to him. They did so. and 
Lord was struck by a forwardness of knowledge, a readiness of expression, and un- 
yieldingness of opinion, whicii even then was remarkable in the future minister. When 
he had left them, Lord Chatham said : " That is the most extraordinary youth I ever 
knew. All my life I have been aiming at the possession of political power, and have 
found the greatest difficulty in getting or keeping it. It is not on the cards of fortune to 
prevent that young man's gaining it, and if ever he does so, he will be the ruin of his 
country." — Blackwood's Edinburgh Mas^azitif, 1825. 

Pitt was born in 1759. Lord Brougham gracefully says of Pitt : " At an age when 
others are but entering on the study of state affairs and the practice of debating, he came 
forth a mature politician, a finished orator, even, as if by inspiration, an accomplished de- 
bater. His knowledge, too, was not confined to the study of the classics, though with 
these he was familiarly conversant ; the more severe pursuits of Cambridge had imparted 
to him some acquaintance with the stricter sciences which have had their home upon the 
banks of the Granta since Newton made them his abode ; and with political philosophy ho 
was more familiar than most Englishmen of his own age." In honor of this great States- 
man there was founded, in 1813, in the University of Cambridge, a Classical " Pitt Seholar- 
ship." 



252 School-Bays of Eminent Men, 

ing Hebrew, go that he might be able to relish the beauties of the Sacred Writings, par- 
ticularly the Psalmody, an object of much admiration with him. His exquisite lines on 
the " Babylonian \\'illow,* transplanted from the Euphrates a hundred years ago," were 
suggested by the delight he took in the 137th Psalm, the most afifecting and beautiful of 
the inspired King's whole poetry. This fine piece was the production of his eighteenth 
year. — Lord Brousham. 

LORD-CHIEF-JUSTICE TENTERDEN AT CANTERBURY AND 

OXFORD. 

The vicissitudes of life, and the contrast presented by great 
elevation from a very humble origin, are strikingly exemplified 
in the history of this able and impartial judge. 

Charles Abbott, Baron Tenterden, was born in 17G2, at Can- 
terbury, where his father was a hair-dresser, " a very decent, 
well-behaved man, much respected in his neighborhood," who 
did his best, with decent humility, to obtain for his son a good 
education. Young Abbott was sent to the King's School in 
Canterbury Cathedral, of which he became the captain, and 
where he so distinguished himself that the trustees of the school 
came to a special vote to send him as an exhibitioner to the Uni- 
versity of Oxford. This assistance he afterward repaid from 
his private purse, by opening it to the same trustees in a similar 
exigency. AVhile he was at Canterbury school, his master. Dr. 
Osmond Beauvoir, it is said, proud of his proficienc}^, showed 
his verses to the clergy of the neighborhood, boasting that "the 
son of the Canterbury barber was qualified to carry off a clas- 
sical prize from any aristocratic versifier at Westminster, Win- 
chester, or Eton." 

He obtained remarkable honors at Oxford. The Class List 
was not established till the commencement of this century, and 
young Abbott took his bachelor's degree in 1785 : consequently, 
there being yet no tripos, he was obliged to content himself with 
all the honors which were open to him. He had gained a 
scholarship at Corpus after he had been a week in Oxford, and 
he gained in 1784 the Latin prize poem, subject, " Globus 
aerostaticus ;" and in 1786, the English prize essay, subject. 
The Use and Abuse of Satire — so that, as the Latin essay 
and English poem were yet unknown, he gained all he could 
gain. 

Abbott lost his father while at the University ; his mother 
then became in a measure dependent on his assistance, and he 
was obliged, in consequence, to decline an advantageous offer 
to go as tutor to a rich gentleman of Virginia ; his small means 
were straitened by the performance of his filial duties ; he was 
obliged to dress plainly, to forego the enjoyment of society, 

♦ Salix Babylonica. 



Anecdote Biographies, 253 

and to sustain himself hardly, yot becominglj, on his limited 
resources. 

The first practical result of young Abbott's efforts was his 
election as Fellow, and his appointment as junior tutor of his 
college. He was already destined for the church, when he was 
invited to become tutor to the son of Mr. Justice Buller. This 
connection introduced him to the judge, who soon discovered his 
intellectual powers and peculiar fitness for law, and recommended 
him to attempt it. The advice was taken ; and we have the 
authority of Lord Campbell for adding that Abbot became the 
very best lawyer of his generation in England, as he had 
already become the finest classical scholar. Lord Campbell 
adds : 

" The scrubby little boy who ran after his father, carrying for 
him a pewter basin, a case of razors, and a hair-powder bag, 
through the streets of Canterbury, became Chief Justice of 
England, was installed among the peers of the United Kingdom, 
attended by the whole profession of the law, proud of him as 
their leader : and when the names of orators and statesmen 
illustrious in their day have perished with their frothy declama- 
tions. Lord Tenterden will be respected as a great magistrate, 
and his judgments will be studied and admired." * 

Lord Tenterden died in 1832, and was buried in the chapel of 
the Foundling Hospital, of which he was Yice-President.t At 
the extreme entrance to the chapel is a marble bust of his Lord- 
ship, and beneath it a Latin inscription, which, after describing 
his humble origin, and judicial eminence, concludes with these 
emphatic words : "Learn, Reader, how much in this country 
may, under the blessing of God, be attained by honest 
industry." 

HOW ROBERT BLOOMFIELD WROTE HIS " FARMER'S BOT" IN 
THE HEART OF LONDON. 

This true poet of nature was born in 1766, at a small village 
in Suffolk : his father died in the same year, leaving his widow 
five other children besides Robert. To obtain a maintenance, 
she opened a school, and taught her own children the elements 
of reading along with those of her neighbors. Besides this 
education, Bloomfield was taught to M'rite for two or three 
months at a school in the town of Ix worth. At the age of eleven 
he went to work upon his uncle's farm, receiving only his board 
for his labor. In his fifteenth year he removed to London, to 

* Lives of the Lord Chief* Justices. 

t Some verses written by his lordship to be set to music, are aonually sung at the com- 
memorative festivals of the Governors of the Hospital. 



254 SchooUDays of Eminent Men, 

join his two brothers in making shoes, in a garret in Bell-alley, 
Coleman-street. At this time he read about as many hours 
every week as boys generally spend in play. He next wrote a 
few verses, which were printed in the Londcn Magazine; and 
he was observed to read with much avidity a copy of Thomson's 
Seasons, which first inspired Bloomfield with the thought of com- 
posing a long poem, such as the Farmer's Boy, the idea being 
favored by a visit of two months to his native district, where he 
had often held the plow, driven a team, and tended sheep. He 
returned to London and shoemaking; but some years elapsed 
before he produced his Farmer's Boy, which he composed while 
he sat at work in his garret in Bell-alley, with six or seven other 
workmen ; and nearly 600 lines were completed before Bloom- 
field committed a line to paper. The poem was published in 
1800, was translated into French and Italian, and partly into 
Latin ; 26,000 copies "were sold in three years ; and it was the 
dearest of the lowly-born poets gratifications, when his book was 
printed, to present a copy of it to his mother, to whom he then 
had it in his power, for the first time, to pay a visit, after twelve 
years' absence from his native village. 

Eloomfield was a little boy for his age. " When I met him and his mother at the inn," 
(in town), faj's his brother, "he strutted before us just as he came from keeping sheep, 
hogs, etc., his shoes filled full of stumps in the heels He, looking about him, slipped up ; 
his nails were unused to a flat pavement. I remember viewing him as he fcampered up — 
how small he was. I hardly thought that little fatherless boy would be one day known 
and esteemed by the most learned, the most respected, the wisest, and the best men of the 
kingdom." 

PRECOCITY OF SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE. 

We have few instances of the precocious development of talent 
so striking as are presented by the boyhood of this great artist. 
He was born in 1769, at Bristol, where his father kept the White 
Lion inn, and was more noted for his love of poetry, and writing 
rhyme, than for his success in business. His son Thomas was 
a very beautiful boy, and had been remarkable from infancy for 
his sprightly and winning manners. His father taught him to 
recite poetry ; and when the child was only four or five years 
old, it was common for him to be presented by his parent to 
strangers who visited the inn at Bristol, and subsequently at the 
Black Bear at Devizes, whither he had removed. At four years 
old, young Lawrence could recite the poem of Joseph and his 
Brethren ; at five, Addison's Nymphs of Solyma ; and at seven, 
Milton's Lycidas. He was already able to use his pencil, and 
to take likenesses, which art he had acquired entirely of himself. 
The portraits which he thus sketched are affirmed to have been 
generally successful : among them was a portrait of Lady Ken- 
yon, which was recognized by a friend twenty-five years after. 



Anecdote Biographies. 255 

At the age of six, Lawrence was sent to school near Bristol 
where he remained scarcely two years ; and this, with a few 
lessons in Latin and French, was all the education he ever 
received. At the age of eight years, he contributed verses to 
the magazines ; and many of his pieces may be found in the 
European and Lady's Magazines from 1780 to 1787. Daines 
Barrington relates that at the age of nine, without instruction 
from any one, Lawrence copied historical pictures in a masterly 
style, and succeeded amazingly in compositions of his own, 
particularly that of Peter denying Christ. In about seven 
minutes he scarcely ever failed to draw a strong likeness of 
any one present, which had generally much freedom and 
grace. He was also then an excellent reader of blank 
verse, and would immediately convince any one that he 
both understood and felt the striking passages of Milton or 
Shakspeare. 

Young Lawrence's early talent soon made him generally 
known. His father would neither permit him to go to Rome to 
study, nor to take lessons at home, lest it should cramp his 
genius. He allowed him, however, to visit the houses of some 
of the neighboring gentry, where he saw some good pictures, 
which first gave him an idea of historical painting ; he copied 
several, and at last produced original compositions of his own. 
When he was ten years old, his father took him from Devizes 
to Oxford, where the boy's qualifications were announced, and 
numbers thronged to him to have their likenesses taken. From 
Oxford they removed to Salisbury, and thence to Weymouth, at 
both which places the talents of the young artist were very 
profitable. At last his father settled at Bath, Thomas being 
then in his thirteenth year. Here sitters came to him in such 
numbers that he raised the price of his crayon portraits from a 
guinea to a guinea and a half. He also made copies ofi pictures; 
and one of the Transfiguration of Raphael, which Lawrence 
sent to the Society of Arts, was rewarded with a silver-gilt 
palette and five guineas. He remained at Bath about six years, 
and was the sole support of his father and family. They 
removed to London when Thomas was in his eighteenth year : 
he became a student of the Royal Academy ; was kindly 
received by Sir Joshua Reynolds ; and on his death, in 1792, 
was appointed his successor as painter to his Majesty and to the 
Dilettanti Society. Thence his reputation grew steadily till 
he became the first portrait-painter of the age : he succeeded 
Mr. West as President of the Royal Academy in 1820. Of 
his earlier career it has been truly said that Art presents no 
parallel case of an equal degree of excellence, attained so 



256 School-Days of Eminent Men. 

rapidlj, and so exclusively without instruction, or opportunity of 
study. 

THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON'S SCHOOLS. 

Arthur Wellesley, the illustrious soldier-statesman, was born 
at Dangan Castle,* at Trim, about twenty miles from Dublin, in 
1769, the year which ushered also Napoleon Bonaparte and 
Cuvier into the world. The castle has been nearly destroyed 
by a conflagration ; but the chamber in which the Duke was 
born is pointed out to this day. Adjoining the castle is the 
humble church of Laracor, of which village Swift was vicar; a 
tall, thick wreck of a wall is all that remains of the Dean's 
vicarage-house. At a little distance, on the fair-green of the 
town, is a Corinthian column in memory of Wellington's fame, 
and surmounted by a statue of the hero. The present parson- 
age at Trim was a favorite residence of Maria Edge worth. 
The town is sad and dreary to look at in its state of crumbling 
decay; yet, while it can bring remembrance of Swift and Miss 
Edgeworth, and while men can say of it, "here Wellington was 
born," it will continue as noted as one of the greatest landmarks 
in the world. 

The Earl and Countess of Mornington, young Arthur's par- 
ents, placed him early at a school at Trim : he must then have 
been a very little boy, for one of his school-fellows relates that 
when Crosbie, afterward Sir Edward, of balloon notoriety, had 
climbed to the top of "the Yellow Steeple," and had thrown 
down his will, disposing of his game-cocks and other boyish val- 
uables, in case he should be killed in coming down — little Arthur 
Wellesley began to shed tears when he found that nothing had 
been left him. 

When about ten years old, Arthur was placed under the tui- 
tion of the Rev. William Gower, at Chelsea. His health was 
indiiferenl, but improved as he grew up. Occasional illness 
produced an indolent and careless manner, and often a degree of 
heaviness. Unlike boys of his age, Arthur was rarely seen to 
play, but generally came lagging out of the school-room into the 
play-ground: in the centre of it v/as a large walnut-tree, against 
which he used to lounge and lean, observing his school-fellows 
playing around him. If any boy played unfairly, Arthur 
quickly gave intelligence to those engaged in the game : on the 
delinquent being turned out, it was generally wished that he, 

* It is also stated that the Duke first saw the light in the town residence of his parents, 
Mornington House, in the centre of the eastern side of Upper Merrion Street, Dublin. 
The proof of Dangan Castle being the Duke's birthplace is, however, more circumstantial. 
The most notable point in the question is the indifference with which it was treated by the 
person most immediately concerned. The Duke kept his bii'thday on the 18th of June. 



Anecdote Biographies. 257 

Arthur, should supply his place, but nothing could induce him 
to do so ; when beset by a party of five or six, he would fight 
with the utmost courage and determination, until he freed him- 
self from their grasp ; he would then retire again to his tree, 
and look about him as quiet, dejected, and observant as he had 
been before. This anecdote was communicated to the British 
and Foreign Review, in 1840, by one of Arthur's school-fellows 
at Chelsea. 

The Duke and his brother, the Marquis Wellesley, passed 
much of their boyhood at Brynkinalt, in North Wales. On one 
occasion they met a playfellow, David Evans, and his sister, 
returning from school, when Arthur commenced a game at 
marbles with the boy, while his sister walked on. Presently^ 
her brother called her to his assistance, as Arthur, he said, had 
stolen his marbles, which he refused to give up. The girl insist- 
ed, and then came the struggle. Arthur was about twelve 
years old, and his brother older ; the girl about ten, and her 
brother two years younger: the battle now began between the 
girl and Arthur, who soon dropped his colors, handed over the 
marbles, and beat a hasty retreat, with tears in his eyes. Mean- 
while Arthur's brother stood at a distance, inciting the fight, but 
taking care to keep out of it. Many years after, the Marquis, 
when in India, wrote to David Evans, and reminding him of 
their games in boyhood; and the Duke, in 1815, when passing 
through Denbigshire, inquired at Brynkinalt for David Evans, 
and recognized him as his old playfellow, but they never saw 
each other again. 

Arthur Wellesley, by the death of his father in 1771, became 
dependent upon the care and prudence of his mother, a lady, as 
it fortunately happened, of talents not unequal to the task. 
Under this direction of his studies, he was sent to Eton, where 
very little seems to be recollected of him at the college. As he 
left before he was in the fifth form, his name was not cut in the 
Upper School when he went away. In the Lower School, how- 
ever, it was cut upon a post, but afterward erased ; and, about 
six-and-twenty years since, in some alterations, this post, with 
some other materials, was cleared away. 

The tradition respecting Arthur in the school is that he was a 
spirited, active boy, but occasionally shy and meditative. Among 
his school-fellows was the facetious Bobus Smith (brother of 
the Rev. Sydney Smith), who, in after-life, when Arthur had 
conquered wherever he had fought, used to say: "I was the 
Duke of Wellington's first victory." " How ?" " Why, one day 
at Eton, Arthur Wellesley and I had a fight, and he beat me 
soundly." 
17 



258 School-Days of Eminent Men, 

While at Eton, Arthur and his two brothers were invited to 
pass the holidays with Lady Dungannon, in Shropshire, and, 
being full of fun, asked each other what news they should tell 
when they arrived. One of them proposed that they should 
say — a pure invention — that their sister Anne had run off with 
the footman, thinking it was likely to produce some sensation^^. 
This they accordingly did, and greatly shocked Lady Dungan-^ 
non ; they entreated, however, that she would not mention the 
circumstance to any one, hoping, as they said, that their sister 
might come back again. Dady Dungannon now excusea her- 
self, having promised to pay a visit to her neighbor, Mrs. Myt- 
ton ; and, unable to keep this secret, of course told it to her. 
On her return, she nearly killed them by saying, ''Ah, my dear 
boys, ill news travels apace ! Will you believe it ? Mrs. My t- 
ton knew all about poor Anne !" This story is worthy of Sheri- 
dan, and if he had heard it, he would certainly have introduced 
it in one of his plays. 

Arthur, when at Eton, lived at Mrs. Ranganean's, one of the 
best boarding-houses in the place. There, when he had grown 
to be a father, he one day took his sons, Lord Douro and his 
brother : he looked over his bed-room, made several inquiries, 
and then descended into the kitchen, and pointed out to his sons 
where he had cut his name on the kitchen door. This interesting 
memento was soon after removed, during some repairs of the 
boarding-house ; and the Duke, on one of his subsequent visits, 
expressed his annoyance at its disappearance. 

Between Arthur and his elder brother, had any one specula- 
ted on the future career of both, how erroneous would have 
been his conclusions ! At his first school, Wellesley gave certain 
promises of a distinguished manhood ; Wellington did not ; and 
yet how easily can this be reconciled ! The taste and fancy that 
afterward produced the senator, were germane to the classic 
forms of Eton ; while those mental properties which alone 
can constitute the soldier, like metal in a mine, lay dormant, 
until time betrayed the ore, and circumstances elicited its bril- 
liancy. 

From Eton, Arthur was transferred, first to private tuition at 
Brighton, and subsequently to the celebrated military seminary 
of Angers, in France. 

For tho deficiency of any early promise in the future hero we are not confined to nega- 
tive evidence alone. His relative inferiority was the subject of some concern to his vijiilant 
mother, and had its influence, as we are led to conclude, in the selection of the military 
profession for one who displayed so little of the family aptitude for elegant siholarship. 
At Angers, though the joung student left no signal reputation behind him, it is clear that 
his time must have been productively employed. Pignerol, the director of the seminary, 
was an engineer of high repute, and the opportunities of acquiring not only professional 
knowledge, but a serviceable mastery of the French tongue, were not likely to have been lost 



Anecdote Biographies, 259 

on such a mind as that of his pupil. Altogether, fix years were consumed in this cour?e of 
edufatioi), which, though partial enough in itself, was so far in advance of the age, that 
we may conceive the young cadet to have carried with him to his corps a more than aver- 
age store of professional acquirements. 

We quote the above from a Memoir which appeared in the 
Times journal, in 1852, immediately after the Duke's death. It 
is somewhat at variance with the evidence of the late Dr. Ben- 
ning, who, while traveling with Blajney, called to see the Col- 
lege at Angers, and inquired of the head of the establishment 
if he had any English boys of promise under his care, when he 
replied he had one Irish lad of great promise, of the name of 
Wesley, the son of Lord Mornington. 

At the end of the stipulated term, he returned to England ; 
and it would appear somewhat unexpectedly to Lady Morning- 
ton, whose first intimation that he iiad left France, was seeing 
him at the Haymarket Theatre, when her ladyship exclaimed, 
almost angrily, " I do believe there is my ugly boy, Arthur." 

Meanwhile, his family had not been unmindful of his pros- 
pects ; for we have the evidence of a letter in the possession 
of a gentleman at Trim, in which Lord Wellesley states that 
the Lord Lieutenant had been two years under promise to pro- 
cure a commission for his brother Arthur, and had not been able 
to fulfill it. At length, in March, 1787, the Hon. Arthur Welles- 
ley, being then in his eighteenth year, received his first com- 
mission as an ensign in the 73rd Regiment of Foot. The only 
point of interest in his position at this moment, was the fact 
that though the young officer commanded sufficient interest to 
bring his deserts into i'avorable notice, he was not circumstanced 
as to rely exclusively on such considerations for advancement. 
He possessed interest enough to make merit available, but not 
enough to dispense with it. On a remarkable occasion in after- 
times he spoke, in the House of Pec^rs, of having " raised him- 
self" by his own exertions to the position he then filled. 

Here our sketch of the Duke's early life may be closed. His 
service of the Sovereigns and the public of this country for 
more than half a century — in diplomatic situations and in coun- 
cils, as well as in the army — has scarcely a parallel in British 
history. His Dispatches are the best evidence of his well- 
regulated mind in education. No letters could ever be more 
temperately or more perspicuously expressed than those famous 
documents. Even as specimens of literary composition they 
are exceedingly good — plain, forcible, fluent, and occasionally 
even humorous. He once declared of the Dispatches, " Well, 
if these were to be written over again, I don't think I should 
alter a word." A single examination of these documents — 
the best record of his own achievements — will show what im- 



260 School-Days of Eminent Men. 

mense results in the aggregate were obtained hj the Duke, 
solely in virtue of habits which he had sedulously cultivated 
from his boyhood — early rising, strict attention to details, — tak- 
ing nothing ascertainable for granted — unflagging industry, and 
silence, except when speech was necessary, or certainly harm- 
less. His early habit of punctuality is pleasingly illustrated in 
the following anecdote : " I will take care to be punctual 
at five to-morrow morning," said the engineer of New London 
Bridge, in acceptance of the Duke's request that he would meet 
him at that hour the following morning. " Say a quarter before 
five," replied the Duke, with a quiet smile ; " I owe all I have 
achieved to being ready a quarter of an hour before it was 
deemed necessary to be so ; and I learned that lesson when a 

But the paramount principle of the Duke's life was his re- 
spect for Truth, which he observed himself with earnestness 
akin to the admiration with which he recognized it in others : 
and we know that the best homage we can pay to virtue is its 
practice. 

GEORGE CANNING AT ETON AND OXFORD. 

This accomplished orator and statesman was born of Irish 
parents, in 1770, in the parish of Marylebone, London. His 
descent on the paternal side was from an ancient family, his 
ancesters having figured at different periods at Bristol, in War- 
wickshire, and in Ireland. His father died when the son was 
only a year old. The early education of Canning was superin- 
tended by his uncle, Mr. Stratford Canning, a merchant of Lon- 
don ; and the expenses were in part defrayed from a small estate 
in Ireland bequeathed by his grandfather.* George Canning 
was first sent to Hyde Abbey School, near Winchester. In his 
thirteenth year he was entered as an Eton Oppidam, and placed 
in the Remove. He soon distinguished himself as a sedulous 
student, and of great quickness in mastering what he undertook 
to learn ; keen and emulous in contest, yet mindful of steady 
discipline. At the same time, he was, says Mr. Creasy, " a boy 
of frank, generous, and conciliatory disposition, and of a bold 
manly, and unflinching spirit." His Latin versification obtained 
him great distinction, as attested by his compositions in the Musce 

* Mrs. Canning, through the influence of Queen Charlotte, was introduced by Garrick 
to the stage as her profession, and she subsequently married Keddish, the actor. Mean- 
while, her son George had become the associate of actors of a low cla.«8, from which in- 
fluence he was rescued by Moody, the Comedian, who stated the boy's case to Mr. Strat- 
ford Canning, and thus opened the road by which he advanced to power and fame. From 
an elegant work entitled Poets and Statesmen: their Homfs and Haunts in the Neighbor 
hood of Eton and Windsor. By William Dowlin, Esq. 1857. 



I 



Anecdote Biographies. 261 

Etonenses. He had written English verses from a very earlj 
age ; and at Eton, in his sixteenth year, he planned with three 
school-fellows a periodical work called the Microcosm^ which 
was published at Windsor weekly for nine months. 

Among Canning's contributions was a poem entitled "The 
Slavery of Greece," inspired by his zeal for the liberation of 
that country from the Turkish yoke, which one of the latest acts 
of his political life greatly contributed to accomplish. Another 
of his papers in the Microcosm, his last contribution, thus earn- 
estly records his love of Eton : "From her to have sucked ' the 
milk of science,' to have contracted for her a pious fondness 
and veneration, which will bind me for ever to her interests, 
and perhaps to have improved by my earnest endeavors the 
younger part of the present generation, is to me a source of in- 
finite pride and satisfaction." 

At seventeen, Mr. Canning was entered as a student at Christ- 
church, Oxford, where he gained some academical honors by 
his Latin poetry, and cultivated that talent for oratory which he 
had begun to display at Eton. His splendid Latin poem on 
the Pilgrimage to Mecca, '^ Iter ad Meccam^^ gained him the 
highest honor in an University where such exercises are deemed 
the surest test of scholarship. At Oxford he formed an in- 
timate friendship with Mr. Jenkinson, afterward Earl of Liver- 
pool, who is supposed to have been of service to him in his 
political career. Canning's college vacations were occasionally 
passed in the house of Sheridan, who introduced him to Mr. 
Fox, and other leaders of the Whig party. On leaving Oxford, 
Canning entered at Lincoln's Inn ; but he soon abandoned the 
study of the law for the political career that was promisingly 
opening to him. 

Canning had a strong bias in favor of elegant literature, and 
would have been no mean poet and author had he not embarked 
FO early on public life, and been incessantly occupied with its 
duties. Even amidst the cares of office, he found time for the 
indulgence of his brilliant wit ; and, in conjunction with Mr. 
John Hookham Frere, Mr. Jenkinson, Mr. George Ellis, Lord 
Clare, Lord Mornington (afterward Marquis Wellesle}'), and 
other social and political friends, he started a paper called the 
Anti'Jacohin, some of its best poetry, burlesques, and jeux- 
d'esprit, being from Mr. Canning's pen. As party effusions, 
these pieces were highly popular and effective ; and that they 
are still read with pleasure is attested by the fact that the poetry 
of the Anti- Jacobin, collected and published in a separate form, 
is still kept in print by the publisher. 



262 School-Days of Eminent Men, 

Among the coincidences in Mr. Canning's career, it may be 
mentioned that he was the same age as his fellow-collegian, the 
Earl of Liverpool, and each became Premier, Canning succeed- 
ing Lord Liverpool, on the illness of the latter, on April 12, 1827: 
he died in the following August, in his 57th year, and was buried 
close to the grave of Pitt, his early patron. The next day after 
his burial, his widow was made a peeress. 

Canning, as a statesman, we are reminded by his statue in 
Palace Yard, was "just alike to freedom and the throne ;" and 
as an orator, eloquent, witty, and of consummate taste. 

SIR WALTER SCOTT — HIS SCHOOLS AND READINGS. 

This amiable poet and novelist, whose genius has gladdened 
many lands, and almost every country of the civilized world, was 
born at Edinburgh, in 1771, in a house at the head of the Col- 
lege Wynd. His father was a writer to the Signet ; and his 
mother, the eldest daughter of Dr. Rutherford, was a well- 
educated gentlewoman, mixed in literary society, and from her 
superintendence of the early tuition of her son Walter, there is 
reason to infer that such advantages influenced his habits and 
taste. In an autobiographical fragment discovered in an old 
cabinet at Abbotsford, after Sir Walter's death, he says he was 
an uncommonly healthy child, but had nearly died in conse- 
quence of his first nurse being ill of a consumption. The wo- 
man was dismissed, and he was consigned to a healthy peasant, 
who used to boast of her laddie being what she called a grand 
gentleman. 

When about eighteen months old, after a fever, he lost the 
power of his right leg, and was ever after lame. Yet, he was a 
remarkably active boy, dauntless, and full of fun and mischief, 
or, as he calls himself, in Marmion^ 

'' A gelf-will'd imp ; a grandame's child." 

He was then sent to the farm-house of Sandy-Knowe, the 
residence of Scott's paternal grandfather. One Tibbie Hunter 
remembered the lame child coming to Sandy-Knowe — and that 
he was "a sweet-tempered bairn, a darling with all about the 
house." The young ewe-milkers delighted to carry him abroad 
on their backs among the crags; and he was very gleg (quick) 
at the upttake, and kenned every sheep and lamb by head-mark 
as well as any of them. But his great favorite was Auld Sandy 
Ormistoun, the cow-bailie ; if the child saw him in the morning, 
he could not be satisfied unless the old man would set him 
astride on his shoulder, and take him to keep him company as he 
lay watching his charge : 



Anecdote Biographies, 263 

" Here was poetic impulse given 
By the green hill, and clear, blue heaven." 

The cow-bailie blew a particular note on his whistle, which 
signified to the maid-servants in the house when the little boy 
wished to be carried home again. Scott told a friend, when 
spending a day in his old age among these well-remembered 
crags, that he delighted to roll about on the grass all day long 
in the midst of the flock, and that the sort of fellowship he thus 
formed with the sheep and lambs had impressed his mind with 
a degree of affectionate feeling toward them which had lasted 
through life. There is a story of his having been forgotten one 
day among the knolls when a thunder-storm came on; and his 
aunt, suddenly recollecting his situation, and running out to 
bring him home, is said to have found him lying on his back, 
clapping his hands at the lightuing, and crying out, " Bonny ! 
Bonny !" at every flash. 

Scott thus relates his early impressions at Sandy-Knowe : 

This was during the heat of the American war, and I remember being as anxious, on 
my uncle's' weekly visits (for we heard news ac no other time), to hear of the defeat of 
Washington, as if I had some deep and personal cause of antipathy to him. I know not 
how this was combined with a very strong prejudice in favor of the Stuart family, which I 
had origiuatly imbibed from the song and tales of the Jacobites. This latter political 
propen.«ity was deeply confirmed by the stories told in my hearing of the cruelties exer- 
cised in the executions at Carlisle, and in the Highlands, after the battle of CuUoden. One 
or two of our own distant relations had fallen on that occasion, and I remember detesting 
the name of Cumberland with more than infant hatred. Mr. Curie, ftirmer, at Yetbyre, 
had been present at their execution ; and it was, probably, from him that I first heard 
these tragic tales, which made so great an impression on me. The local information which 
I conceive had some share in forming my future taste and pursuits, I derived from the 
old songs and tales which then formed the amusements of a retired country family My 
grandmother, in whose youth the old Border depredations were matter of recent tradition, 
used to tell me many a tale of Watt of Harden, Wight Willie of Aikwood, Jamie Tellfer, 
of the fair Dodhead, and other heroes — merrymen all of the persuasion and calling of 
Robin Hood and Little John Two or three old books which lay in the window- 
seat were explored for my amusement in the tedious winter days. Automathes and Ram- 
say's Tea-table Miscellany were my favorites; although, at a later period, an odd volume 
of Josephus's Wars of the Jews divided my partiality. 

My kind and affectionate aunt, Miss Janet Scott, whoce memory will ever be dear to me, 
used to read these works to'me with admirable patience, and I could repeat long passages 
by heart. The ballad of Hardjknute I was early master of, to the great annoyance of 
almost our only visitor, the worthy clergyman of the parish, Dr. Duncan, who had not 
patience to have a sober chat interrupted by my shouting forth this ditty. Methinks 1 see 
his tall, thin, emaciated figure, his legs ca>ed in clasped gambadoes, and his face of a 
length that would have livaled the Knight of La Mancha's, and hear him exclaiming, 
" One may as well speak in the mouth of a cannon as where that child is.'' 

In his fourth year, Scott was taken by his aunt to Bath, in 
expectation that the waters might prove of some advantage to 
his lameness, but to little purpose. At Bath, he learned to read 
at a dame-school, and had an occasional lesson from his aunt. 
Afterward, when grown a big boy, he had a few lessons at Edin- 
burgh, but never acquired a just pronunciation, nor could he 
read with much propriety. At Bath, Scott saw the venerable 
John Home, author of Douglas; and his uncle, Captain 
Robert Scott, introduced him to the little amusements which 



264 School-Bays of Eminent Men, 

suited his age, and to the theatre. One evening, when the play 
was As You Like It, Scott was so scandalized at the quarrel be- 
tween Orlando and his brother, that he screamed out, " A'n't 
they brothers ? " 

Scott now returned to Edinburgh. 

" In 1779 (he sa3's), I was sent to the second cla?s of the Grammar School, or High 
School, of Edinburgh, then taught by Mr Luke Eraser, a good Latin scholar, and a worthy 
man Our class contained some very excellent scholars. 'J"he first Dux was James Buehan, 
who retained his honored place almost without a day's interval all the while we were at 

the High School The next best scholar {sed longo intervallo) were my friend 

David Douglas, the heir and eleve of the celebrated Adam Smith, and James Hope, now a 
writer to the Signet. As for myself, I glanced like a meteor from one end of the class to 
the other, and commonly disgusted my kind master as much by my negligence and friv- 
olity, as I occasionally pleased him by flashes of intellect and talent. Among my com- 
panions, my good nature and a. flow of ready imagination rendered me very popular. 
Boys are uncommonly just in their feelings, and at least equally generous. My lameness, 
and the efforts which I made to supply that disadvantage, by making up in address what 
I wauted in activity, engaged the latter principle in my favor ; and in the winter play- 
hours, when hard exercise was impossible, my tales used to assemble an admiring au- 
dience like Luckie Brown's fireside, and happy was he that could sit next to the inexhaust- 
ible narrator. I was al.'»o, though often negligent at my own task, always ready to assist my 
friends : and hence 1 had a little party of staunch partisans and adherents, stout of hand 
and heart, though somewhat dull of head, the very tools for raising a hero to eminence. 
So on the whole, I made a brighter figure in the yard than in the class." 

Mr. Lockhart notes upon these reminiscences, that a school- 
fellow, Mr. Claud Russell, remembers Scott to have once made 
a great leap iu his class, through the stupidity of some laggard 
on the dulf's (dolt's) bench, who being asked, on boggling at 
cum, " what part of speech is with V answered, " a substantive." 
The rector, after a moment's pause, thought it worth while to 
ask his dux — "Is ivith ever a substantive?" but all were silent 
till the query reached Scott, then near the bottom of the class, 
w^ho instantly responded by quoting a verse from the book of 
Judges: "And Sampson said unto Delilah, if they bind me 
with seven green withs that were never dried, then shall I be 
weak, and as another man." Another upward movement, ac- 
complished in a less laudable manner, Scott thus related to Mr. 
Rogers, the poet : 

" There was a boy in my class at school, who stood always at the top, nor could I with 
all my efforts supplant him. Day came after day, and still he kept his place, do what I 
would ; till at length I observed that when a question was asked him, he always fumbled 
with his fingers at a particular button on the lower part of his waistcoat To remove it, 
therefore, became expedient in my eyes ; and iu an evil moment it was removed with a 
knife. Great was my anxiety to know the success of my measure ; it. succeeded too well. 
When the boy was again questioned, his fingers sought again for the button, but it was 
not to be found In his distress he looked down for it ; it was to be seen no more than to 
be felt. He stood confounded, and I took possession of his place ; nor did he ever recover 
it, or ever, I believe, suspect who was the author of his wrong. Often in after-life has the 
sight of him smote mo as I passed by him ; and often have I resolved to make him somo 
reparation ; but it ended in good resolutions." 

The autobiography tells us that Scott's translations in verse 
from Horace and Virgil were often approved by Dr. Adam. 
One of these little pieces, written in a weak, bojish scrawl, 



Anecdote Biographies, 265 

within pencil-marks still visible, had been carefully preserved 
by his mother ; and was found folded up in a cover inscribed by 
the old lady— "Jfy Walter's first lines, 1782." 

At Kelso, at the age of thirteen, he first read Percy's ReliqueSy 
in an antique garden, under the shade of a huge plane-tree. 
This work had as great an effect in making him a poet as 
Spenser had on Cowley, but with Scott the seeds were long in 
germinating. Previous to this he had, indeed, tried his hand at 
verse. The following, among other lines, were discovered 
wrapped up in a cover inscribed by Dr. Adam, of the High 
School, "Walter Scott, July, 1783:" 

ON THE SETTINa SUJf. 

Those evening clouds, that setting ray, 
And beauteous tints serve to display 

Their great Creator's praise ; 
Then let the short-lived thing called man, 
• Whose life's comprised within a span, 

To him his homage raise. 
We often praise the evening clouds, 

And tin's so gay and bold, 
But seldom think upon our God, 

Who tinged these clouds with gold. 

In 1783, Scott was placed at the University of Edinburgh, 
where his studies were as irregular as at the High School. 

Mr. Lockhart considers Sco?t to have underrated his own 
academical attainments. He had no pretensions to the claim of 
an extensive, far less of an accurate, Latin scholar ; but he 
could read any Latin author, of any age, so as to catch without 
difficulty his meaning : and although his favorite Latin poet, as 
well as historian in later days, was Buchanan, he had preserved, 
or subsequently acquired, a strong relish for some others of more 
ancient date — particularly Lucian and Claudian. Of Greek he 
had forgotten even the alphabet; and, in 1830, having occasion 
to introduce from some authority on his table two Greek words 
into his Introduction to Popular Poetry, he sent for Mr. Lock- 
hart, who was in the house, to insert the words in the MS. At 
an early period, Scott enjoyed the real Tasso and Ariosto ; and 
read Gil Bias in the original : and not much later, he acquired 
as much Spanish as served for the Guerras Civiles de Granada, 
Lazarillo de Tormes, and above all, Don Quixote. He read all 
these languages in after-life with about the same facility. Some- 
what later he acquired German. In these languages he sought 
for incidents and images ; but for the treasures of diction he was 
content to dig on British soil. 

At the age of seventeen, Scott saw Robert Burns. The poet, 
while at Professor Ferguson's one day, was struck by some lines 
attached to a print of a soldier digging in the snow, and inquired 



266 School-Days of Eminent Men, 

who was the author ; none of the old or the learned spoke, when 
Scott answered, "'They are by Langhorne." Burns, fixing his 
large bright eyes on the boy, and striding up to him, said, "it is 
no common course of reading taught you this." "This lad," said 
he to the compan}^, "will be heard of yet." 

Scott's early love of reading was, doubtless, fostered by the 
circumstance of his lameness. He had just given over the 
amusements of boyhood, when, to use his own words, "along 
illness threw him back on the kingdom of fiction, as it were by 
a species of fatality." He had ruptured a blood-vessel, and 
motion and speech for a long time were pronounced to be 
dangerous. For several weeks he was confined to his bed, and 
almost his sole amusement was reading. He says : 

"There was at this time a circulating library at Edinburgh, founded, I believe, by the 
celebrated Allan lUinsay, which, besides containing a most respectable collection of books 
of every description, was, as might have been expected, peculiarly rich in works of fiction. 
I was plunged into this great ocean of reading without compass or pilot : and unless when 
some one had the charity to play at chess with me, I was allowed to do nothing, save read, 
from morning to night. As my taste and appetite were gratified in nothing else, I indem- 
nified myself bv becoming a glutton of books. Accordingly, I believe I re.td almost all the 
old romances, old pla3S, and epic poetry, in that formidable collection, and no doubt was 
unconsciously amassing materials for the task in which it has been my lot to be so much 
employed." 

Being somewhat satiated with fiction, Scott found in histories, 
memoirs, voyages and travels, events nearly as wonderful as 
those in the works of imagination, with the additional advantage, 
that they were at least in a great measure true. Thus Scott 
passed nearly two years, when he removed into the country, and 
would have felt very lonely but for the amusement which he 
derived from a good though old-fashioned library. He has well 
described these solitary and desultory studies in the first chapter 
of Waverley, where the hero is represented as "driving through 
the sea of books, like a vessel v/ithout pilot or rudder." " He 
had read, and stored in a memory of uncommon tenacity, much 
curious, though ill-arranged miscellaneous information. In Eng- 
lish literature, he was master of Shakspeare and Milton, of our 
earlier dramatic authors, of many picturesque and interesting 
passages from our old historical chronicles, and was particularly 
well acquainted with Spenser, Drayton, and other poets, whose 
subjects have been on romantic fiction — of all themes the most 
fascinating to a youthful imagination, before the passions have 
roused themselves, and demand poetry of a more sentimental 
description." Other favorites were Pulci, the Decameron, and 
the chivalrous and romantic lore of Spain. 

Upon his recovery, Scott returned to Edinburgh, and resumed 
his studies in the law, which had been interrupted by illness. 
In 1791, he was admitted a member of the Speculative Society 



Anecdote Biographies, 267 

for training in elocution and debate. On the first night he met 
there Mr. Jeffrey, who visited Scott next day, "in a small den 
on the sunk floor of his father's house, in George's-square, sur- 
rounded with dingy books ;" and thus commenced a friendship 
between the two most distinguised men of letters wliich Edin- 
burgh produced in their time. In the den, Scott liad collected 
out-of-the-way things of all sorts. " He had more books than 
shelves ; a small painted cabinet, with Scotch and Roman coins 
in it, and so forth. A claymore and Lochabar axe, given him 
by old Tnvernahyle, mounted guard on a little print of Prince 
Charlie ; and Broughtoii's Saucer was hooked up again.-t the wall 
below it." Such was the germ of the magnificent library and 
museum which Scott, in after-life, assembled in the castellated 
mansion which he built for himself at Abbotsford* 

Scott succeeded so far in his lucubrations as to be called to the 
bar as an advocate in 1792. He established himself in good 
style at Edinburgh, but had little practice. He rarely attempt- 
ed literary composition ; nor have any fugitive pieces of Scott's 
youth been found in any publication of the day. But in Dr. 
Anderson's Bee for May 9, 1792, the following notice is 
thought to refer to a contribution from Scott: "The Editor 
regrets that the verses of W. S. are too defective for pub- 
lication.^^ 

About this time Scott employed his leisure in collecting the 
ballad poetry of Scotland ; and in this class of composition he 
made his first attempt at originality. Thus may be said to have 
commenced his literary life of six-and-thirty years. He breathed 
his last at Abbotsford in 1832; his mind never appearing to 
wander in its delirium toward those works which had filled all 
Europe with his fame. This fact is of interest in literary 
history ; and it accords with the observation of honest Allan 
Cunningham, that "Scott, although the most accomplished 
author of his day, yet he had none of the airs of authorship." 

Sir Walter Scott received his baronetcy from George TV. 
in 1820. 

LORD HILL, THE WATERLOO HERO. 

Rowland, Lord Viscount Hill, was born in Shropshire, in 
1772. He was first placed at Ightfield, a neighboring village, 
and thence sent to Chester, where he won the affections of his 

*The splendor in Avhich Scott lived at Abbotsford was entirely obtained from the pro- 
ducts of his pen : to this he owed his acres, his castle, and his means of hospitality. In 
1^26, through his losses in the publishing business, his debts amounted to 117,000/. He 
would listen to no overtures of composition with his creditors — his only demand was for 
time. lie retrenched his expenses, took lodgings in Edinburgh, labored incessantly at his 
literary work, and in four years realized for his creditora no less than lOjOOO/.! 



268 School-Days of Eminent Men, 

school-fellows from his gentle disposition, and the gallantry with 
which he was always ready to assist any comrade who had got 
into a scrape, at the same time that he was himself the least 
likely to be involved in one on his own account. He was of 
delicate constitution, and he was thrown more than usually upon 
the care of Mrs. Winfield, wife of one of the masters of the 
school. It is one of the delightful traits of Hill's character, 
that the grateful affection which he then felt for this amiable 
lady, continued an enduring sentiment in after-life, and was 
repeatedly exhibited after the delicate school-boy had grown up 
into one of the most renowned generals of his time. Thus, 
after the abdication of Napoleon in 1814, when Lord Hill 
accompanied his friend. Lord Combermere, on his entry into 
Chester, where he himself received a greeting all the more 
cordial from his having spent some of his earlier years at a 
Chester school, as he passed along the streets of the city in a 
triumphal procession, it was observed that his eye singled out 
among the applauding throng, one on whom he bestowed the 
kindest recognition. It was Mrs. Winfield whom he had thus 
distinguished : he had never forgotten her kindness to him when 
a boy. 

The same love of horticulture, the same fondness for pet ani- 
mals, which characterized Hill in after-life, had already been 
exhibited by him at school, where his little garden prospered, 
and his favorites throve, better than those of any of his com- 
panions. But there is another characteristic of his, which 
comes with something like surprise upon those who have been 
in the habit of associating the name of Hill so closely with the 
battle-field. "His sensibility," says Mrs. Winfield, "was almost 
feminine." One of the boys happened to cut his finger, and was 
brought by Rowland Hill to have it dressed; but her atten- 
tion was soon drawn from the wound to Rowland, who had 
fainted. 

And even after his military career had commenced, when it 
happened that a prize-fight was exhibited near the windows of 
his lodgings, such was the effect produced on him by the brutal- 
ity of the scene, that he was carried fainting out of his room. 
So little does there require to be in common between the most 
heroic courage and the coarse and vulgar attribute of insensi- 
bility to the sight of blood and suffering. He explained after- 
ward, in reference to the carnage which he had witnessed in 
war, that he had still the same feelings as at first, "but 
in the excitement of battle all individual sensation was lost 
sight of." 

Young Hill entered the army in 1790, and upon leave of 



Anecdote Biographies. 269 

absence went to a military academy at Strasburg, where he 
remained till 1791, when he obtained a lieutenancy. Lord Hill 
greatly distinguished himself at the battle of Waterloo, and was 
there exposed to the greatest personal danger : his horse was 
shot under him, and fell wounded in five places ; he himself was 
rolled over and severely bruised, and for half an hour, in the 
melee, it was feared by his troops that he had been killed. But 
he rejoined them to their great delight, and was at their head to 
the close of the day. 

COLERIDGE AT CHRIST's HOSPITAL AND CAMBRIDGE. 

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "logician, metaphysician, bard," 
may be said to have commanded a larger number of zealous 
admirers than any other literary man in England since Dr. 
Johnson. Coleridge was a native of Devonshire, and was born 
in 1772, at St. Mary Ottery, of which parish his father was 
vicar. From 1775, he tells us in his Biographia Literaria, he 
continued at the reading-school, because he was too little to be 
trusted among his father's school-boys. He relates further, how, 
through the jealousy of a brother, he was in earliest childhood 
huifed away from the enjoyments of muscular activity by play, 
to take refuge by his mother's side, on his little stool, to read 
his little book, and listen to the talk of his elders. In 1782, he 
was sent to Christ's Hospital ; and after passing six weeks in 
the branch school at Hertford, little Coleridge, already regarded 
by his relations as a talking prodigy, came up to the great school 
in London, where he continued for eight years, with Bowyer for 
his teacher, and Charles Lamb for his associate ; Coleridge 
being "the poor friendless boy" in Elia's "Christ's Hospital 
Five-and-thirty Years Ago." Here Coleridge made very great 
progress in his classical studies ; for he had before his fifteenth 
year translated the hymns of Synesius into English Anacreontics. 
His choice of these hymns for translation is explained by his 
having even at that early age, plunged deeply into metaphysics. 
He says : "At a very premature age, even before my fifteenth 
year, I had bewildered myself in metaphysics and theological 
controversy. Nothing else pleased me. History and particular 
facts lost all interest in my mind. Poetry itself, yea, novels and 
romaoces, became insipid to me." From such pursuits, Cole- 
ridge was, however, weaned for a time by the reading of Mr. 
Lisle Bowles's Sonnets, which had just then been published, and 
made a powerful influence upon his mind. 

He describes himself as being, from eight to fourteen, "a 
play less dreamer, a heluo librorum (a glutton of books)." A 
stranger, whom he accidentally met one day in the streets of 



270 ScJiool-Days of Eminent Men, 

London, and who was struck with his conversation, made him 
free of a circulating library, and he read through the collection, 
folios and all. At fourteen, he had, like Gibbon, a stock of 
erudition that might have puzzled a doctor, and a degree of 
ignorance of which a school-boy would have been ashamed. He 
had no ambition : his father was dead ; and he would have 
apprenticed himself to a shoemaker who lived near the school, 
had not the head-master prevented him. 

lie has left some interesting recollections of Christ's Hospital in his time. "The disci- 
pline," he siivs, " was ultra- t-par tan : all domestic ties were to be put as-ide. ' Eoy,' I 
remember Eo,ver sa\ing to nie once, when I was crying, the first day of my return after 
the holidays, ' Boy ! the school is your father I Boy ! the school is your mother I Boy ! 
the school is your brother ! the school is your sister I the school is your tirst-cousin and 
jour second-cousin, and all the rest of your relations I Let's have no more crying." " 

Coleridge became deputy-Grecian, or head-scholar, and 
obtained an exhibition or presentation from Christ's Hospital to 
Jesus College, Cambridge, in 1791. While at the University, 
he did not turn his attention at all to mathematics ; but obtained 
a prize for a Greek ode on the Slave-trade, and distinguished 
himself in a contest for the Craven scholarship, in which Dr. 
Butler, afterward Bishop of Lichfield, was the successful 
candidate. 

" Coleridge," says a school-fellow of his, who followed him to Cambridge in 1792, " was 
very studious, bur his rending was desultory and capricious. lie took liule exercise ; but 
ho was ready at any time to unbend his mind to conversation ; and for the sake of this, 
his room (the ground-lh.or room on the right hand of the stan-case, facing the great gate) 
was a constant rendezvous of conversation— loving friends, I will not call them loungers, 
for they did not call to kill time, but to enjoy it. U hat evenings have I spent in tho-e 
rooms! What suppers, or iiizings,SiS they were called, have I enjoyed, when iEschj lus, 
and IMato, and Thucydides were pushed aside, with a pile of lexicons and the like, to dis- 
cuss the pamphlets of the day I Ever and anon a pamphlet issued from the pen of Burke. 
There was no need of having the book before us ; — Coleridge had read it iu the morning, 
and in the evening he would repeat whole pages veibatim.'" 

Coleridge did not take a degree. During the second year of 
his residence, he suddenly left the University in a fit of despon- 
dency ; and after wandering for a while about the streets of 
London, in extreme pecuniary distress, terminated his adventure 
by enlisting in the 15th Dragoons, under the assumed name of 
Comberbach. He made but a poor dragoon, and never advanced 
beyond the awkward squad. He wrote letters, however, for all 
his comrades, and they attended to his horse and accoutrements. 
In four months his history and circumstances became known : 
he had written under his saddle, on the stable-wall, a Latin sen- 
tence, (Eheu ! quam infortunii miserrimum est fuisse felicem !) 
which led to an inquiry by the captain of his troop ; and 
Coleridge was discharged and restored to his family and friends. 
He returned to Cambridge; and shortly afterward went on a 
visit to an old school-fellow at Oxford, where an introduction 
to Southey, then an undergraduate at Balliol College, became 



Anecdote Biographies, 271 

the hinge on which a large part of his after-life was destined 
to turn. 

Charles Lamb, in his " Christ's Hospital Five-and-thirty Years 
Ago," has this delightful recollection of his fellow-Blue: 

Come back into my memory, like as thou wert in the day-ppring of my fancies, with 
hope like a fiery column before thee — the dark pillar not yet turned — Samuel Ta\lor Cole- 
ridifp, Logician, Meraphysiciiin, Bard I How have I Fcen the casual pHP>er through the 
cloj.-ters stand !=till, entranced with adniirarion (while he weighed the disproportion between 
the speech and the uatb of the young Mirandola), to hear thee unfold, in thy d^ep and 
sweet intonations, the mysteries of Janiblichus, or Plodnus (for even in tlio.'e years thou 
•waxedst not pale at such philosophic draughts), or reciring Homer in his Greek, or Pin- 
dar — while the walls of the old Gray Friars re-echoed the accents of the ins-i'neri charity- 
hoy ! — Many were the " wit combats " (to dally awhile with the words of old Fuller) 

between him and •'. V. l^e G , '"which two I beheld likw a Spanish great galleon, and 

an English man-of-war ; Master Coleridge, like the former, was built far higher in learning, 
solid, but slow in his performances. C V. L , with tlie English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, 
but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about, and take advaatage of all 
winds by the quickness of his wit and invention." — The Essays of Elia. 

ROBERT SOUTHEY AT HIS SCHOOLS, AND AT OXFORD. 

Robert Southey, the business of whose life was the pursuit of 
literature, and the first and last joy of his heart, was born in the 
city of Bristol, in 1774, and was the son of a small tradesman.* 
His childhood, however, was not passed at home, but from the 
age of two to six, at the house of Miss Tyler, his aunt, in Bath. 
He had no playmates ; he was never permitted to do anything 
in which by any possibility he might contract dirt; he was kept 
up late at night in dramatic society, and kept in bed late in the 
morning at the side of his aunt; and his chief pastime — for 
neither at tliis time nor at a later period had Southey any pro- 
pensity for boyish sports — was pricking holes in playbills — an 
amusement, of course, suggested to him by Miss Tyler, and 
witnessed by her with infinite delight. As soon as the child 
could read, his aunt's friends furnished him with books. The 
son of Francis Newbery, of St. Paid's Churchyard, and the 
well-known publisher of Goody Two Shoes,'\ Giles Gingerbread, 
*' and other such delectable histories in sixpenny books lor chil- 
dren, splendidly bound in the flowered and gilt Dutch paper of 
former days," sent the child twenty such volumes. 

"This," says Southey, in his autobiography, "was a rich pres- 
ent, and may have been more instrumental than I am aware in 

*For the materials of this sketch the writer is greatly indebted to the first volume of 
the Life and Leitfrs of Robert Sovthey. Edited by his Son, the Rev. Charles Cuthbert 
Southey, M.A. 1849. In this work, the narrative in the exquisite fragment of Autobi- 
ography (.eases at Wtstminster School, when, Southey had hardly attained his fifteenth 
year. 

t " Godwin, the author of CaU.b WilHawx. who had been a child's publisher himself, 
had always a strong persuasion that Goldsmith wrote Goody Two Shoes; and if so, the 
effort belongs to 1763 ; Mrs. Margery, radiant with gold and gingerbread, and rich in pic- 
tures as extravagantly ill-drawn as they are dear and well remembered, made her appear- 
ance at Christmas." — Life and Adventures of OLver Goldsmith. By John Foster. ^848. 
Page 300. 



272 School-Bays of Eminent Men. 

giving me that love of books, and that decided determination to 
literature, as the one thing desirable, which manifested itself 
from my childhood, and which no circumstance in after-life ever 
slackened or abated." 

Sou they 's first school was in the village of Corston, nine miles 
from Bristol : it is described in one of his earliest poems extant 
(the Retrospect), written after he had visited the house in 1793. 
It had been the mansion of some decayed family, and had its 
walled-gardens, summer-houses, gate-pillars, a large orchard, and 
fine old walnut-trees ; the garden was the playground ; and 
Southey recollected of the interior a black oaken staircase from 
the hall, and the school-room hung with faded tapestry, behind 
which the boys kept their hoards of crabs. The master was a 
remarkable man, but an unfit tutor : his whole delight was math- 
ematics and astronomy, and he had constructed an orrery so 
large that it filled a room. Southey speaks of his ornamental 
penmanship* — such as flourishing an angel, a serpent, a fish, or 
a pen, and even historical pictures ; and grand spelling-matches 
of puzzling words hunted from the dictionary. Here Southey 
read Cordery and Erasmus, and got into Phasdrus. 

Before the boy was seven years old, he had been at the the- 
atre more frequently than he afterward went from the age of 
twenty till his death. The conversations to which he listened 
were invariably of actors, of authors, and of the triumphs of 
both ; the familiar books of the household were tragedies and 
the "acting drama." Shakspeare was in his hands as soon as 
he could read : and it was long before he had any other knowl- 
edge of the history of England than what he gathered from 
Shakspeare's plays. " Indeed," he says, " when I first read the 
plain matter of fact, the difference which appeared then puzzled 
and did not please me ; and for some time I preferred Shaks- 
peare's authority to the historians." Titus Androniciis was at 
first Southey's favorite play. He went through Beaumont and 
Fletcher before he was eight years old, reading them merely 
for the interest which the stories afforded him, but acquiring im- 
perceptibly familiarity with the diction, and ear for the blank 
verse of our great masters. 

At the same tender age, the resolution was first formed to ex- 
cel in the profession which the child heard extolled for its dig- 
nity from morning till night. At first the actors of plays were 

* Southey wrote a stiff, cramp hand, but remarkably neat and regular. He states that 
he set the fashion for black-letter in title-pages and half-titles, from his admiration of 
German-text at school. 

One of the earliest holiday letters which he wrote was a description of Stonehenge, from 
the Salisbury Guide, which surprised and delighted his master, aud gained Southey great 
praise. 



Anecdote Biograi^hies, 273 

esteemed beyond all other men ; these in then' turn gave place 
to writers of plays, whom, almost as soon as he could hold a 
pen, the boy himself began to emulate. He was not quite nine 
when he set to work upon a tragedy, the subject being the con- 
tinence of Scipio. In 1782 he went as a day-boarder to a school 
in Bristol, learning from his master, as invariably proved the 
ca«e with him, much le>s than he contrived to teach himself. 
Before he had reached his twelfth year he had read with the 
keenest relish Hoole's translations of Jerusalem Liberated and 
the Orlando Furioso, and had been entranced with the Faerie 
Queen of Spenser. 

At thirteen, Southey was not only master of Tasso, Ariosto, 
and Spenser, but well acquainted also, through translations, 
with Homer and Ovid. He was familiar with ancient history, 
and his acquaintance w^ith the light literature of the day was 
bounded only by the supply. A more industrious infancy^ was 
never known; but it was surpassed by the ceaseless energy of 
youth, which, in its turn, was superseded by the unfaltering and 
unequaled labor of the man. 

In his twelfth and thirteenth years he wrote three heroic 
epistles in rhyme ; made some translations from Ovid, Virgil, 
and Horace ; composed a satiiical description of English man- 
ners, as delivered by Omai, the Tahitian,to his countrymen ; and 
next began the story of the Trojan War in a dramatic form. 

Southey was removed to Westminster School early in 1788, 
and had lor his tutor Botch Hayes, so named from the manner 
in which he mended his pupils' verses ; here Southey first ap- 
peared in print, in a weekly paper called the Trijler, in imita- 
tion (*f the Microcosm at Eton. He next set on foot the Flagel- 
lant^ in which appeared a sarcastic attack upon corporal punish- 
ment, which so roused the wrath of Dr. Vincent, the head-master, 
that Southey acknowledged himself the w^riler and apologized, 
but he was compelled to leave the school. He returned to his 
aunt at Bristol. He next went to matriculate at Oxford ; his 
name had been put down at Christ church, but the Dean (Cyril 
Jackson) having heard of the Flagellant, refused to admit 
Southey. He, however, entered at Balliol College, where he 
went to reside in January, 1793;* one of his college tiiends 
declares that h(} was a perfect heluo librorum then as well as 
throughout his life; among his writings there is abundant evi- 
dence that he had drunk deeply both of the Greek and Latin 

* He soon attacked the law against wearing boots at Balliol ; and he refused to have 
his hair dressed and powdered by the college barber, which was castomary with fresh- 
men. 

18 



274 School-Bays of Eminent Men. 

poets ; and his letters at this time indicate a mind imbued with 
heathen philosophy and Grecian republicanism. He rose at 
five o'clock in the morning to study ; yet he used to say that he 
learned two things only at Oxford — to row and to swim. He 
loved the place : in one of his delightful letters, he says : 

When I walk oyer these streets, what various recollections throng upon me '. what 
scenes fancy delineates from the hour when Albert first marked it as the t^eat of learning I 
Bacon's study is demolished, so I shall never have the honor of being killed by its fall ; 
before my window Latimer and Ridley were burnt, and there is not even a stone to mark 
the place where a monument should be erected to religious liberty. 

No attempt was made to ground Southey in prosody ; and, as 
this defect in his education was never remedied (when he went 
to Westminster he was too forward in other things to be placed 
low enough in the school for regular training in this), Southey 
remained to the last as liable to make a false quantity as any 
Scotchman. 

In his nineteenth year Southey completed his Joan of Arc. 
Next year Mr. Coleridge came to Oxford, and was introduced 
to Southey, who describes him as " of most uncommon merit, of 
the strongest genius, the clearest judgment, the best heart." The 
two friends next planned the emigration scheme of " Pantisoc- 
racy," * which was soon given up. Southey left Oxford in the 
spring of 1795, and as a means of support, with Coleridge, 
gave public lectures, which were well attended. The poem of 
Joan of Arc was next printed and published by Mr. Cottle, of 
Bristol, which may be considered as the commencement of 
Southey's long and arduous career as an author ; for it has been 
well observed that " no artisan in the workshop, no peasant in 
the field, no handicraftsman at his board, ever went so young to 
his apprenticeship, or wrought so unremittingly through life for 
a bare livelihood, as Robert Southey." 

CHARLES LAMB AT CHRIST's HOSPITAL. 

This amiable poet and essayist, whose writings, serious and 
humorous, alike point to some healthy and benevolent moral, 
was born in the Inner Temple, in 1775. At the age of seven, 
he was received into the school of Christ's Hospital, and there 
remained till he had entered his fifteenth year. "Small of 
stature, delicate of frame, and constitutionally nervous and timid,'* 

* With this wild scheme of '• Pantisocracy," Miss Tyler was so offended that she would 
never again see him. Ihe expenses of his education, both at school and college, were de- 
frayed by his uncle, the Rev Herbert Hill, at that time a chaplain to the British Factory 
at Lisbon, to whom he so gratefully addresses his dedication to his Colloquies : 
" friend ! more than father ! whom I found 
Forbearing always, always kind ; to whom 
No gratitude can speak the debt I owe." 



Anecdote Biography. 275 

says his biographer, Judge Talfourd, " he would seem unfitted 
to encounter the discipHne of a school formed to restrain some 
hundreds of lads in the heart of the metropolis, or to fight his 
way among them. But the sweetness of his disposition won him 
favor from all ; and although the antique peculiarities of the 
school tinged his opening imagination, they did not sadden his 
childhood." * 

" Lamb,'* says his school-fellow Le Grice, " was an amiable, 
gentle boy, very sensible and keenly observing, indulged by his 
school-fellows and his master on account of his infirmity of 
speech. His countenance was mild ; his complexion clear brown, 
with an expression which might lead you to think he was of 
Jewish descent. His eyes were not each of the same color : 
one was hazel, the other had specks of grey in the iris, mingled 
as we see red spots in the blood-stone. His step was planti- 
grade, which made his walk slow and peculiar, adding to the 
staid appearance of his figure." 

He was unfitted for joining in any boisterous sport : while 
others were all fire and play, he stole along with all the self- 
concentration of a young monk. He passed from cloister to 
cloister — from the school to the Temple; and here in the 
gardens, on the terrace, or at the fountain, was his home and 
recreation. Here he had access to the library of Mr. Salt, 
one of the Benchers ; and thus, to use Lamb's own words, he 
was " tumbled in a spacious closet of good old English reading, 
where he browsed at will upon that fair and wholesome pas- 
turage." 

When Lamb quitted school, he was "in Greek, but not 
Deputy Grecian." He had read Virgil, Sallust, Terence, selec 
tions from Lucian's Dialogues, and Xenophon ; and evinced 
considerable skill in the niceties of Latin composition, both in 
prose and verse. But the impediment in his speech proved an 
insuperable obstacle to his striving for an exhibition, which was 
given under the condition of entering the church, for which he 
was unfitted by nature : to this apparently hard lot he submit- 
ted with cheerfulness. Toward the close of 1789, he quitted 
Christ's Hospital : thenceforth his employment lay in the South- 
Sea House, and in the accountant's office of the East India 
Company. 

Lamb has left us many charming pictures of his school-days 
and school-fellows, which must have been as delightful to him 
as the accounts of them are to the reader. In his " Christ's 
Hospital Five-and-thirty Years Ago," he says : 

* The letters of Charles Lamb, with a Sketch of his Life. By Thomas Noon Talfourd, 
one of his Executors. Vol. i. 1837. 



276 School-Days of Eminent Men. 

" We had plenty of exercise after school hours ; and, for myself, I must confess, that I 
was never happier than in them The Upper and the Lower Grammar Schools were held 
in the same room ; and an imaginary line only divided their bounds Their character 
was as different as that of the inhabitants on the two sides of the Pyrenees. The Kev. 
James Boyer was the Upper-Muster, but the l.'ev. Matthew Field presided over that portion 
of the department of which I had the good fortune to be a member. We lived a life as 
careless as birds. We talked and did ju.-it what we pleased, and nobody molested us. We 
carried an accidence, or a grammar, for form; but, for any trouble it gave us, we might 
take two years in getting through the verbs deponent, and anotlier two in forgetting all 
that we had learned about them. There was now and then the formality of saving a les- 
son, but if you had not learned it, a brush across the shoulders (just enough to disturb a 
fly) was the sole remonstrance Fi*-ld never used the rod; and, in truth, he wielded the 

cane with no great good will— holding it 'like a dancer ' \\ e had chissics 

of our own, without being beholden to 'insolent Greece or haughty Rome,' that passed 
current amongst us — Peter Wilkins— the Adventures of the Hon. Captain Itobert lioyle — 
the Fortunate Blue Coat Boy — and the like. Or we cultivated a turn for mechanic and 
scientific operations, making little sun-dials of paper, or wielding tho.-e ingenious paren- 
thesis called cat-cradles; or making dry peas to dance upon the end of a tin pipe; or 
studying the art military over that laudable game ' French and English,' and a Hundred 
other such devices to pass away the time — mixing the u.seful with tlie agreeable — as would 
have made the souls of Itosseau and John Locke chuckle to have seen us. 

♦' Matthew Field had for many years the classical charge of a hundred children, during t'-e 
four or five years of their education : and his very highest form .«eld(>m proceeded further 
than two or three of the introductory fables of Phnedrus. How things were suffered to go 
on thus, I cannot guess Bo^er, who was the proper per>oii to have remedied these 
abuses, always affected, perhaps felt, a delicacy in interfering in a province not strictly 
hi3 own. I have not been without my suspicions, that he was not altogether displeased 
at the contrast we presented to his end of the school. We were a sort of helots to his 
young Spartans. He would sometimes, with ironic deference, send to borrow a rod of the 
Under-Master, and then, with sardonic grin, observe to one of his upper boys, ' how neat 
and fresh the twigs looked.' While his pale students were battering their brains over 
Xenophon and Plato, with a silence as deep as that enjoined by the Samite, we were enjoy- 
In" ourselves at our ease, in our little Goshen. We saw a lit*l« into the .secrets of the dis- 
cipline, and the prospect did but the more reconcile us to our lot. His thunders rolled 
innocuous forces : his storms came near, but never touched us ; contrary to Gideon's mir- 
acle, while all around were drenched, our fleece was dry.* His boys turned out the better 
scholars; we, I suspect, have the advantage in temper His pupils cannot speak of him 
without something of terror alloying their gratitude : the remembrance of Field comes 
back with all the soothing images of indolence, and summer slumbers, and work hke play, 
and innoceni idleness, and Elysian exemptions, and life itself 'a Placing holiday.' 

" Though suBiciently removed from the juiisdiction of Boyer, we were near enough (aa 
I have said) to understand a little of his .system. We occasionally heard sounds of the 
Ulutantes, and caught glances of Tartarus B. was a rabid pedant His Engji.-h stjle was 
crampt to barbarism His Easter anthems (for his duty obliged him to these peiiodical 
flights) were grating as scrannel pipes. He would laugh, ay, and heartily, but then it 
must be at Flaccus's quibble about Rex — or at the triitis xeveriiui in vultit, or inspicere in 
patinas of Terence— thin jests, which at their first broaching could hardly have had vis 
enough to move a Roman muscle.— He had two wigs, both pedantic, but of different omen. 
The one serene, smiling, fresh-powdered, berokenitig a mild day. The other, an old, dis- 
colored, unkempt, angry caxon, denoting fretjuent and bloody execution Woe to the 
school when he made his morning appearance in his pnssy^ or passionate wig. No comet 
expounded surer. — J B. had a heavy hand. I have known him d uble his knotty fist at 
a poor trembling child (the maternal milk hardly dry upon its lips) with a ' Sirrah, do you 
pr««sume to set >our wits at me'? ' 

^ # i(^ «= ♦ * # 

'' Oh, it is pleasant, a? it is rare, to find the same arm linked in yours at forf^y, which at 
thirteen helped it to turn over the Cicero De Amicitia, or .''ome 'ale of Antique Friend- 
ehip, which the young heart even *hen was burning to anticipate Co-Grecian with S. 

^as Th , who has since executed with ability various diplomatic functions at the 

Northern courts. Th was a tall, dark, saturnine youth, sparing of speech, with raven 

locks. Thomas Fanshaw Middleton followed him (now Bishop of Calcutta), a scholar and 
a gentleman in his teens." t 



* Cowley. 

t A paper of interest akin to Lamb's " Recollections," was communicated by a quon- 
dam Blue, Mr. Peter Cunningham, F.S A , to the Ii/usiratt 'I Lundon Nuvs for December 19, 
1857. '1 his genial and clever piece of picture-writing is entitled " Christ's Hospital and 
Christmas Ere," 



Anecdote Biographies, 277 



SIR HUMPHRY DAVY AT PENZANCE: HIS SCHOOLS AND 
SELF-EDUCATION. 

Humphry Davy, who-e genius is unrivaled in the annals of 
modern chemistry, was born in 1778, at Penzance, in Cornwall, 
where his father was a carver. He was a healthy, strong, and 
active child ; he " w^alked off" at nine months old, and before 
he was two years old he could speak fluently. Before he had 
learned his letters, he could recite little prayers and stories, 
which had been repeated to him till he got them by heart ; and 
before he had learned to write, he amused himself with copying 
the figures in ^sop's Fables, and reading the PilgrinCs Progress; 
of the latter book he could repeat a great part, even before he 
could well read it. When scarcely five years old, he made 
rhymes and recited them in Christmas gambols, fancifully dress- 
ed for the occasion. His disposition as a child was remarkably 
sweet and affectionate. He had an extraordinary strong per- 
ception, which is attested by Dr. Paris, who, in his Life of Davy, 
tells us that " he would, at the age of five years, turn over the 
pages of a book as rapidly as if he were merely engaged in 
counting the leaves or in hunting after pictures, and yet on be- 
ing questioned, he could generally give a very satisfactory 
account of the contents. The same facility w^as retained by him 
through life." 

He first was sent to a school at which readin": and writintj 
only w^ere taught. Thence he was removed to the grammar- 
school at Penzance, kept by the Rev. W. Coryton ; and subse- 
quently to Truro, under Dr. Cardew, whose school produced 
more men of distinguished ability than any other in the West 
of England. Young Davy took the lead in his class, and com- 
posed Latin and English verse with facility; but he was more 
remarkable out of school, and by his comrades, than for any great 
advance in learning. He excelled in story-telling, partly from 
books, especially the Arabian Nights, and partly from old people, 
particularly from his grandmother Davy, who had a rich store 
of traditions and marvels. These stories were narrated by Davy 
to his boyish companions under the balcony of the Star Inn; and 
here, with his play-fellow, Rowe, a printer, of Penzance, Davy 
also exhibited his earliest chemical experiments; and by means 
of those of an explosive nature, many a trick was played on 
the innkeeper, and some other testy folks in the neighborhood. 
This and another boyish pursuit followed him into manhood — 
namely, fishing ; for when a child, with a crooked pin, tied to a 
stick by a bit of thread, he w^ould go through the movements of 
the angler, and fish in the gutter of the street in which he 



278 School-Days of Eminent Men. 

lived ; and, when he was able to wield a fishing-rod, or carry a 
gun, he roamed at large in quest of sport in the adjoining coun- 
try. Under the same favorable circumstances, his taste for 
natural history was indulged in a little garden of his own, which 
he kept in order ; and he was fond of collecting and painting 
birds and fishes. 

Davy's early love of romantic scenery is shown in a poem 
composed by him, descriptive of St. Michael's Mount, and the 
traditionary history of its having been in the midst of a forest — j 
in the folio win «: extract: 



i 



" By the orient gleam 
Whitening the foam of the blue wave, that breaks 
Around his granite feet, but dimly seen, 
Majestic Michael rises I He whose brow 
Is crowned with castles, and whose rocky sides 
Are clad with dusky ivy : He who.-e base, 
Beat by the storms of ages, stands unmoved 
Amidst the wreck of things — the change of time. 
That base, encircled by the azure waves, 
Was once with verdure clad, the towering oaks. 
Whose awful shades among the Druids strayed 
To cut the hallowed mistletoe and hold 
High converse with their Gods." 

" Davy was thought at the time (says his brother) a clever 
boy, but not a prodigy."* His last master, Dr. Cardew, speaks 
of his regularity in his school duties, but not of any extraordi- 
nary abilities ; his best exercises were translations from the 
classics into English verse. At the age of fifteen, his school 
education was considered completed, and his self-education, to 
which he owed almost everything, was about to commence. 

He spent the greater part of the next year in fishing, shooting, 
swimming, and solitary rambles ; but, at length, he settled to 
study. Early in 1795, he was apprenticed to a surgeon and 
apothecary in Penzance ; and about this time he commenced his 
note-books, the earliest of which contains a plan of study, and 
hints and essays, in which, says Dr. Davy, " with all the daring 
confidence of youth, he enters upon the most diflUcult problems 
in metaphysics and theology, and employing a syllogistic method 
of reasoning (which, as he observes in his Consolations in 
Travel, young men commonly follow, in entering upon such in- 
quiries), he arrives, as might be expected, at a conclusion con- 
trary to the good feelings and common sense of mankind." 

In the following year, young Davy entered on the study of 
mathematics, and finished the elementary course ; he was very 
systematic ; the propositions are all entered very neatly, and the 
demonstrations given ; the diagrams being done with a pen, with- 
out the aid of mathematical instruments, not even of a common 

* Life of Sir Humphry Davy, by his brother, John Davy, M.D., F.B.S. 



Anecdote Biographies, 279 

compass and ruler. But his favorite pursuit was metaphysics, and 
his rough notes show an acquaintance with the writings of Locke, 
Hartley, Bishop Berkeley, Hume, Helvetius, and Condorcet; 
Reid, and other Scotch metaphysicians. These studies he soon 
associated with physiology. In 1797, he commenced in earnest 
natural philosophy ; and just as he was entering his nineteenth 
year, he began the study of chemistry with Lavoisier's Elements 
and Nicholson's Dictionary. He very soon entered on a course 
of experiments, his apparatus consisting mostly of phials, wine- 
glasses, and tea-cups, tobacco-pipes, and earthen crucibles ; and 
his materials chiefly the mineral acids and the alkalies, and some 
other articles in common use in medicine. He began to experi- 
ment in his bed-room, in Mr. Tonkin's house at Penzance ; and 
there being no fire in the room, when he required it he went 
down to the kitchen with his crucible. Such was Davy's rapidity 
in this new pursuit, that in four months he was in correspond- 
ence with Dr. Beddoes, relative to his researches on " Heat and 
Light," and a new hypothesis on their nature, to which Dr. 
Beddoes became a convert. The result was Davy's first pub- 
lication. Essays on Heat and Eighty in 1799, which had been in 
part written a few months before he had commenced the study 
of chemistry. 

" Such," says Dr. Davy, " was the commencement of Hum- 
phry Davy's career of original research, which, in a few years, 
by a succession of discoveries, accomplished more in relation to 
change of theory and extension of science than, in the most ar- 
dent and ambitious moments of youth, he could either have 
hoped to effect or imagined possible." 

Another of Humphry's early associates was Mr. Robert 
Dunkin, a saddler, and a member of the Society of Friends. He 
was an entirely self-taught man, and in addition to his making 
saddles, he built organs, constructed electrical machines, and 
wrote verses. He made experiments in company with young 
Davy, in which they were assisted by Mr. Tom Harvey, a drug- 
gist, at Penzance, who supplied Davy with chemicals for making 
detonating balls, etc. After a discussion on the notion of Heat, 
he was induced, one winter's day, to go to Larigan river, and try 
if he could develop heat by rubbing two pieces of ice together^ an 
experiment which he repeated with much eclat^ many years after, 
at the Royal Institution. 

He had already become the friend of Mr. Gregory Watt (son 
of the celebrated James Watt), and with him visited the most re- 
markable mines near Penzance, collecting specimens of rocks 
and minerals. And here, working the Wherry Mine, under- 
neath the sands, and its shaft in the sea, young Davy saw a 



280 School-Bays of Eminent Men, 

steam-engine at work — this being one of the earliest of Watt's 
steam-engines that had been introduced into Cornwall. About 
this time he became acquainted with Mr. Davies Gilbert, after- 
ward Davy's successor as President oP the Royal Society. 

Meanwhile, Davy's progress in medicine was considerable; so 
that in the fourth year of his studies, he was considered by Dr. 
Beddoes competent to take charge of the patients belonging to 
the Pneumatic Institution at Clifon, thus entering on his public 
career before he was twenty years old. Here he applied himself 
with great zeal to complete his experiments and essays on Light 
and Heat; and, above all, in investigating the effects of the gases 
in respiration. Of these, the nitrous oxide was one of the first he 
experimented upon ; and his discovery of its wonderful agency 
was the origin of the researches which established his character 
as a chemical philosopher ; though before it was published (in 
1800), Davy had begun that series of galvanic experiments which 
ultimately led to some of his greatest discoveries. The materials 
for the Researches were rapidly collected : Davy says in a rough 
draft of the preface, "These experiments have been made since 
April, 1799, the period when 1 first breathed nitrous oxide. Ten 
months of incessant labor were employed in making them ; three 
months in detailing them. The author was under twenty years 
of age, pupil to a surgeon-apothecary in the most remote town of 
Cornwall, with little access to philosophical books, and none at 
all to philosophical men." 

So intense was his application, and so little his regard for 
health or even life, that he nearlj'^ lost it from the breathing of 
carburetted hydrogen, and was compelled for a time to leave the 
laboratory. 

The following passage from a note-book shows the intellectual 
life he now led, as well as the variety of his pursuits : 

" Rf^ohition — To work two hours with pen before breakfast on ' The Lover of Nature ;' 
and ' The Feelings of Eldon,' from six till eight ; from nine till two, in experiments ; from 
four to six, reading ; seven till ten, metaphysical reading [i. e., system of the universe)." 

He now began to discontinue writing verses. In a letter of 
this time, he says: "Do not suppose I am turned poet. Philos- 
ophy, chemistry and medicine are my profession." Yet he 
meditated a poem in blank verse on the Deliverance of the 
Israelites from Egypt, the plan and characters of which he had 
sketched. 

He had now during the short period of little more than two 
years, whilst he was at Clifton, published the Essays on Heat and 
Light, and contributed eight important papers to Nicholson's 
Journal. A higher distinction awaited him : the Royal Institu- 



Anecdote Biographies. 281 

tion* had recently been founded in London; and in May, 1802, 
"Mr. Davy (late of Bristol) was appointed Professor of Chem- 
istry." In April following, he gave his first lecture on galvanic 
phenomena, Sir Joseph Banks, Count Rumford, and otlier dis- 
tinguislied philosophers, being present. " His youth, his sim- 
plicity, his natural eloquence, his chemical knowledge, his happy 
illustrations and well-conducted experiments," and the auspicious 
state of science, insured Davy great and instant success. In the 
previous year, he had read before the Royal Society a paper 
upon " Galvanic Combinations ;" and from that period to 1829, 
almost every volume of the Transactions contains a communica- 
tion by him. 

At the Royal Institution, then, Davy began his brilliant sci- 
entific career, and he remained there until 1812. His greatest 
labors were his discovery of the decomposition of the fixed al- 
kalies, and the reestablishment of the simple nature of chlorine ; 
his other researches were the investiofation of astringent vege- 
tables, in connection with the art of tanning; the analysis of 
rocks and minerals, in connection with geology ; the comprehen- 
sive subject of agricultural chemistry; and galvanism and elec- 
tro-chemical science. His lectures were often attended by 1000 
persons. He was knighted in 1812, and subsequently created 
a baronet. 

Davy's best known achievement was his invention of the 
miner's Safety Lamp in 1815. He became President of the 
Royal Society in 1820 ; he resigned the chair in 1827, and re- 
tired to the Continent. He died after a lingering illness, in 
1829, at Geneva, where he is buried. A simple monument 
stands at the head of his grave : there is a tablet to his memory 
in Westminster Abbey, and a monument at Penzance, his birth- 
place. He retained his love of angling to the last: not long be- 
fore his death, he resided in an hotel at Lay bach, in Styria, 
where the success with which he transferred the trout to his 
basket procured him the title of " the English wizard." He 
spent the greater part of the day in angling, or in geologizing 
among the mountains. 

GEORGE STEPHENSON, THE RAILWAY ENGINEER, AND HIS 
SCHOOLMASTERS AND SELF-TUITION. 

In the present age of great social changes, the application of 
steam to locomotive purposes, or, in other words, the invention 

*The Royal Institution has been appropriately termed " the workshop of the Koyal So- 
ciety." Here Davy constructed his great voltaic battery of 2000 double plates of copper 
and zinc, four inches square, th« whole surface being 1'28,000 square inches. The miner- 
alogical collection in the Museum was also commenced by Davy. It must not. be omitted, 
that he was one of the earliest experimenters in the Photographic Art. 



282 School-Days of Eminent 3fen. 

of the railway, takes foremost rank, and confers upon its intro- 
ducer the high merit of being a signal public benefactor. This 
honor is due to George Stephenson, who, from being a poor 
" cow-boy," raised himself to wealth and eminence, and without 
one solitary advantage except what he derived from his own 
genius, stamped his name upon the most wonderful achievement 
of our times. His early history is a surprising example of the 
triumph of singular and unerring sagacity over difficulties. 
His school instruction was little and late ; but his education 
may be said to have begun almost from the moment he saw 
coal-wagons drawn upon the tramway before his father's cot- 
tage-door, and from his moulding clay-engines with his play- 
mates. 

George Stephenson was born in 1781, in the colliery village of 
"Wy lam, about eight miles west of Newcastle-on-Tyne, amid slag 
and cinders, in an ordinary laborer's cottage, with unplastered 
walls, bare rafters, and floor of clay. His father was the de- 
scendant of an ancient and honorable line of working men, and 
his mother, Mabel, was " a rale canny body ;" but the wages of 
the former as a fireman amounting to no more than twelve shil- 
lings a week, schooling for George was out of the question, and 
he was taken by his father birdnesting, or told stories about Sin- 
bad and Robinson Crusoe as a substitute. His interest in birds' 
nests never left him to his dying day, nor were other sights of 
his childhood less identified with the serious business of his life. 
In the rails of the wooden tram-road before his cottage, on which 
he saw the coal-wagons dragged by horses from the pit to the 
loading-quay, half the destiny of an age was latent, to be evolved 
hereafter by the very boy, who, after his own probation was over, 
had to keep his younger brothers and sisters out of the way of 
the horses. Thus eight years passed away, when the family re- 
moved to Dewley-burn, and George, to his great joy, was raised 
to the post of cow-boy to a neighboring farmer, at the wages of 
twopence a-day. He had plenty of spare time on his hands, 
which he spent in birdnesting, also in making whistles out of 
reeds and scrannel straws, and erecting Lilliputian mills in the 
little water streams that ran into the Dewley Bog. There can 
be no doubt that he indicated thus early that bent which is 
termed a mechanical genius. His favorite amusement, and this 
deserves to be noted, was the erection of clai/ engines, in con- 
junction with a certain Tom Tholoway. The boys found the 
clay for their engines in the adjoining bog, and the hemlock 
which grew about supplied them with abundance of imaginary 
steam-pipes. The place is still pointed out "just aboon tho cut 
end," as the people of the hamlet describe it, where the future 



Anecdote Biographies. 283 

engineer made his first essays in modeling. As the boy grew 
older, and more able to work, he was set to lead the horses in 
plowing, and to hoe turnips, at the advanced wages of fourpence 
a-day. Then he was taken on at the colHery as a " picker," at 
sixpence a-day, whence he was advanced to be driver of the 
gin-horse at eightpence ; and there are those who still remember 
him in that capacity as a "grit bare-legged laddie," whom they 
describe as " quick-witted and full of fun and tricks." He him- 
self had some misgivings as to his physical dimensions, and was 
wont to hide himself when the owner of the colliery went 
round, lest he should be thought too little a boy to earn his 
small wages. His fixed ambition was to be an engineman ; and 
great, therefore, was his exultation when, at about fourteen years 
of age, he was appointed fireman, at the wages of one shilling 
a-day. 

Thenceforth his fortunes took him from one pit to another, 
and procured him rising wages with his rising stature. At 
Throckley-bridge, when advanced to twelve shillings a-week, "I 
am now," sad he, "a made man for life." At seventeen he shot 
ahead of his father, being made an engineman or plugman, while 
the latter remained a fireman. He soon studied and mastered 
the working of his engine, and it became a sort of pet with him. 
His greatest privilege was to find some one who could read to 
him by the engine-fire out of any book or stray newspaper which 
found its way into the colliery. Thus he heard that the Egyp- 
tians hatched birds* eggs by artificial heat, and endeavored to 
do the same in his engine-house. He learnt also, that the won- 
derful engines of Watt* and Boulton were to be found described 

♦James Watt, the great improver of the Steam-engine, born at Greenock, in 1736, 
received his early education mostly at home ; although he attended for a time the public 
elementary schools in his native town. His ill-health, which often confined him to his 
chamber, appears to have led him to the cultivation, with unusual assiduity, of his intel- 
lectual powers. It is said that when only six years of age, he was discovered solving a 
geometrical problem upon the hearth with a piece of chalk ; and other circumstances 
related of him justify the remark elicited from a friend on the above occasion, that he was 
"no common child." About 1.60, he amused himself by making an electrical machine ; 
and it is related that his aunt upbraided him one evening at the tea-table for what seemed 
to her to be listless idleness : taking off the Hd of the tea-kettle and putting it on again ; 
holding sometimes a cup, and sometimes a silver spoon, over the steam ; watching the exit 
of the steam from the spout ; and counting the drops of water into which it became con- 
densed. Hence, the boy pondering before the tea-kettle has been viewed as the embryo 
engineer prognosticating the discoveries which were to immortalize him. During his youth 
he indulged his love for botany on the banks of Loch Lomond, and his rambles among the 
mountain scenery of his native land aroused an attention to mineralogy and geology. 
Chemistry was a favorite subject when he was confined by ill-health to his father's dwel- 
ling He read eagerly books on natural philosophy, surgery, and medicine. Leaving, 
however, all these studies. Watt applied himself to the profession of a mathematical instru- 
ment maker, and after a time settled in Glasgow, where, displaying much ingenuity and 
manual dexterity, his superior intelligence led to his sh' p being a favorite resort for the 
most eminent scientific men in Glasgow. Watt needed only prompting to take up and 
conquer any subject ; and Professor Kobinson states that he learnt the German language 
in order to peruse Leupold's Theatrum Machinarum, because the solution of a problem 
oa which he was engaged seemed to require it ; and that similar reasons led him subse- 



284 School-Bays of Eminent Men. 

in books, and with the object of mastering these books, though 
a grown man, he went to a night-school at threepence 
a-week to learn his letters. He also practiced "pot-hooks," 
and at the age of nineteen was proud to be able to write his 
own name. 

Stephenson may be said to have anticipated a Mechanics' 
Institute at the bottom of a coal-pit: for he, and others of the 
workmen less gifted, made their companions who could read give 
them some little instruction, and read any stray paper which 
might reach their remote village in the days of the Fist Napo- 
leon's first efforts to conquer Europe. 

In the winter of 1799, George removed to the night-school 
kept by a Scotch dominie, named Andrew Robertson, who was a 
skilled arithmetician. Here George learnt "figuring" much 
faster than his school-fellows — "he took to figures so wonderful." 
He worked out his sums in his bye-hours, improving every 
minute of his spare time by the engine-fire, solving the arith- 
metical problems set him upon his slate by his master, so that he 
soon became well advanced in arithmetic. At length, Robert- 
son could carry Stephenson no further, the pupil having out- 
stripped the master. He went on, however, with his writing 
lessons, and by the next year, 1802 — when he signed his name 
on his marriage — he was able to write a good, legible round 
hand. 

By improving his spare hours in the evening, he was silently 
and surely paving the way for being something more than a 
mere workman, by studying principles of mechanics, and the 
laws by which his engine worked. By steady conduct and sav- 
ing habits, he not only sustained the pressure of the times, but 
procured the coveted means of educating his son. Soon after- 
ward he signalized himself by curing a wheezy engine, at which 
"all the engineers of the neighborhood were tried, as well as 
Crowther of the Ouseburn, but they were clean bet." He got 
10/. for this job, and from this day his services as an engineer 
came into request. 

In 1814, he placed a locomotive on the Killingworth Railway; 
and this engine, improved in 1815, is the parent of the whole 
race of locomotives which has since sprung into existence. 
This was, indeed, a year of double triumph to Stephenson, for 
in it he produced his Safety Lamp for miners ; though Sir 
Humphry Davy's lamp was reported to be something more per- 

qiiently to study Italian. Without neglecting his business in the daytime, Watt deroted 
his nights to various and often profound studies ; and the mere difficulty of a subject, pro- 
vided it was worthy of pursuit, seems to have recommended it to his indefatigable charac- 
ter Thus was passed the early life of Watt, previous to his seriously directing his atten- 
tion to the properties of steam. 



Anecdote Biographies. 285 

feet than what was called "invention claimed bj a person, an 
engine-vvriiiht, of the name of Stephenson." 

In 1825, Stephenson's locomotive was worked on the Stockton 
and Darlington Railway; and in 1830, he drove his engine, 
"The Rocket," upon the Liverpool and Manchester line, across 
Chat Moss, at the rate of thirty miles an hour, and thereby 
gained the prize of 500/. Thirty years after he had been a 
worker in a pit at Newcastle, he traveled from that city to 
London, behind one of his own engines, in nine hours ; and 
Liverpool and London have raised statues of George Stephen- 
son, the Engineer, to whose intelligence and peraeverance we 
owe the introduction of this mighty power.* 

BOYHOOD AND EAULY DEATH OF HENRY KIRKE WHITE. 

Few instances of early death from ardor in the pursuit of 
knowledge are so touching as that afforded in the brief span of 
the life of the amiable and gifted Henry Kirke White. He was 
born in 1785, at Nottingfiam, where his father followed the 
business of a butcher. He was sent to school at three years of 
acre, and soon became so fond of readinnj that he could be 
scarcely got to lay down his book, that he might take his meals. 
At the age of seven, he attempted to express his ideas upon 
paper; his first composition being a tale, which, however, he 
only communicated to the servant, whom he had secretly taught 
to write. Before the age of eleven, in addition to reading and 
writing, he outstripped his school-fellows in arithmetic and 
French. Soon after this he began to w^rite verse. He assisted 
at his father's business for some time, carrying the butcher's 
basket; but he so disliked this occupation, that at the age of 
fourteen, he was apprenticed to a sto»'king-weaver. But, to use 
his own words, he "wanted something to occupy his brain ;" still, 
he scarcely dare complain, for he knew that his family could 
hardly afford to educate him for any higher employment. His 
mother, however, moved by his wretchedness, after he had been 
about a year at the loom, prevailed upon his father to place him 
in an attorney's office at Nottingham; where, notwithstanding 
he attended the office twelve hours a day, he applied his leisure 
to studying the Greek and Latin languages, and was able, in ten 
months, to read Horace. He also made considerable progress 
in Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese; in chemistry, electricity, 
and astronomy ; while his less severe studies were draw ing, 
music, and practical mechanics ; and in extempore speaking, he 

*The narration of these events has been principally condensed from Mr. Sniiles's Life of 
Ge rge Stf/ilienson (pub!i«hed in 1857) ; an admirable specimen of biographical writing, 
earnest and unaffected, and in every way worthy of its great subject. 



286 School-Days of Eminent Men. 

distanced his competitors in a debating-society which was then 
held at Nottingham. 

In his fifteenth year, he sent to a London periodical, the 
Monthly Preceptor, a translation from Horace, for which he 
received a silver medal. This success induced him to print, in 
1803, a volume of verses, the longest of which, entitled Clifton 
Grove, is in the style of Goldsmith. This publication was 
harshly criticised in the Monthly Review, which distressed the 
young poet exceedingly ; but it obtained for him the kindly 
notice and friendship of Mr. Southey, who considered the poems 
"to discover strong marks of genius." Meanwhile, Henry, by 
a course of religious reading, grew ardently devotional, so as to 
increase the desire which he had long felt for an University 
education. Despairing of this, he renewed his legal studies with 
such severe application, as rarely to allow himself more than two 
or three hours' sleep during the night, and often not going to 
bed at all. This excessive application brought on an alarming 
illness, from which his friends thought that he never entirely 
recovered. At length, in 1804, he quitted his employer at Not- 
tingham, and after a year's preparatory study, entered St. John's 
College, Cambridge, where a sizarship had been obtained for 
him: bat, says Mr. Southey, "the seeds of death were in him, 
and the place which he had so long looked on with hope, served 
unhappily as a hot-house to ripen them." His exertions at the 
University were very severe : he studied for a scholarship, but, 
through ill health, could not come forward. He then passed the 
general college examination, and at its close was declared the 
first man of his year. As an instance of how he used "to coin 
time, it is related that he committed to memory a whole 
tragedy of Euripides, during his walks." At the end of this 
term, he was again pronounced first man : a tutor in mathe- 
matics for the long vacation was now provided for him by the 
college ; but this distinction was purchased at the sacrifice of 
health and life : he went to London to recruit his shattered 
nerv^es and spirits, but he got no better. He returned to the 
University worn out in body and mind, and died after an attack 
of delirium, October 19, 1806. Mr. Southey wrote a sketch of 
his life, and edited his Remains, the publication of which proved 
highly profitable to White's family. A tablet to his memory, 
with a medallion by Chantrey, was placed in All Saints' Church, 
Cambridge, at the expense of Mr. Boott, a young American 
gentleman. It bears the following inscription by Professor 
Smythe : 



Anecdote Biographies. 287 

Warm with the fond hope and learning's sacred flame, 
To Granta's bowers the youthful poet came ; 
Unconquered powers the immortal mind displayed, 
But worn with anxious thought, the frame decayed. 
Pale o'er his lamp, and in his cell retired, 
The martyr student faded and expired. 
Oh 1 genius, taste, and piety sincere. 
Too early lost 'midst studies too severe I 
Foremost to mourn, was generous Southey seen, 
He told the tale, and showed what White had been ; 
Nor told in vain. Far o'er the Atlantic wave 
A wanderer came, and sought the poet's grave : 
On yon low stone he saw his lonely name. 
And raised this fond memorial to his fame. 

Lord Bjron has consecrated some lines of pure pathos to the 
memory of White, who 

" View'd his own feather on the fatal dart. 
And wing'd the shaft that quiver'd in his heart." 

Henry Kirke "White's verse is fluent and correct, plaintive and 
reflective, and rich in fancy and description ; and he affords a 
fine example of youthful ardor devoted to the purest and noblest 
objects. His case, has, however, been referred to as an alarm- 
ing instance of the danger of mental pressure, and of the injury 
that extreme and misdirected application of the mind may do to 
the body. " The picture of a Kirke White," says a popular writer, 
"dying at the age of 21, of nocturnal study, wet towels round 
heated temples, want of sleep, want of air, want of everything 
which Nature intended for the body, is not only melancholy 
because it is connected with an early death ; it is melancholy 
also on account of the certain effect which would have followed 
such a course unchecked if he had lived." 

Dr. Forbes Winslow, however, considers this illustration 
unfortunate. "Kirke White," he adds, "from his earliest 
infancy, was of so delicate a constitution as to be unfit (as was 
supposed) for any active occupation. The question may naturally 
arise — would so active and irritable a mind, united to so feeble 
a frame, have lacked opportunity under any circumstances of 
rapidly wearing out both itself and its earthly tenement ? The 
wasting fever of such a mind is not to be allayed by any restric- 
tions as to hours of study, rest, or general hygiene."* Although 
difference of opinion exists as to the case of Kirke White, the 
effect of mental labor upon bodily health, in relation to age, 
temperament, and other circumstances, cannot be too closely 
watched ; and wherever there is. an insatiate craving after knowl- 
edge, so as to produce an overgrowth of mind, the extreme 
application cannot too soon be restrained. 

♦Journal of Psychological Medicine and Mental Pathology. New Series. — No. IX. 



288 School-Days of Eminent Men. 



SIR IiOI}P:RT PEEL AT IIAJiliOW AND OXFORD. 

This distinguished ^tates^man, whose name is indii^solubly a?so- 
ciated with some of the most important events in the history of 
our time, was born in 1788, in a cotianre adjoining Chamber Hall, 
Lis father's house, in the neighlorhood of Bury, Lancasliire, 
which happened at that time to be under repair. He dee^cended 
from the ancient family of De Pele, established fir.'-t in York- 
shire, {it;d afterward in Lancashire. His grandfather com- 
menced, and his father completed, the acquisition of a large for- 
tune as a cotton-spinner; and, as if "to marshal him the way 
that he was goirg," IVJr. Peel, the father, two years after the 
birth of his son Robert, entertd the House of Commons as m 
member, and as a zealous supporter of Mr. Pitt: in ]800 he 
received a baronetcy. 

The son was sent early to Hipperholme School, in Yorkshire, 
where lie cut upon a block of stone (now preserved at Halifax) 
tlie following inscription : 

II PEEL. 
No hostile bands can antedate my doom. 

He was removed to Harrow School, and appears in the 
Speech Bill of 1803, as I^-el, sen., Upper-Fiith Foim, Ko. 58. 
Lord liyron, his school-fellow (and born in the tame year), 
says of laim: 

'• Pef'l, the orator and Ftatp^man (that wnp. or if, or is to to), wn.« my form-fellow, and 
wc wt're both at the top of our r<niOve. M e w>re on pood terniB, buf hi» bi other Wiiw my 
Ultimate fi lend, 'ihere were always fp-eat hopes f>f I'lel an.oi'g8t up all, maf lers nnd k hoi- 
ars — and he haH not di.-appointed them. As a scholar, he wa« creatly my superior; a3 a 
declainicr and aefor, 1 was reckoned at leaft his equal ; as a nhf ol-toy <ivi of Fchw)l, I 
was always in scrapes, and he v&v&r. ai.d in srhoo he alwajs ki;ew his lesson, and I 
rarely,- but when I knew it, 1 knew it nearly as well. In general iiifoimation, Listorj', 
etc., I think I wa« bis superior, as well as of most boys of my standii g." * 

He was (says his biographer, Doubleday) diligent, studious, 
and sagacious, if not quick, but never brilliant ; preserving a 
high station among his school-mates by exertion and persever- 
ance rather than genius ; and being remarkable for prudent 
good sen-e rather than showy talent. f His memory is fondly 
cheri.-hed at Harrow, where the room which he occupied in a 
house in the town is kept in its original state, with a brick on 
which he cut his name, the genuineness of the inscription 
being verified by Peel's handwriting in a ciphering-bof*k of the 
same date. His name is al^o cut in the panel of the old school- 
room, with those of his three son.s, whom he placed in the 
school. 

♦For an anecdote of his friendship with Lord Byron, eee page 291. 
t Political Life of Sir PiObert Peel, 1856, toI. i. p. 42. 



Anecdote BiograpJdes, 289 

In 1804, Peel left Harrow, and entered Christchurch, Oxford, 
as a gentleman commoner. At the University, he was a diligent 
and laborious student; and in 1808, on taking his degree, ob- 
tained a double first-class, the highest honors, both in classics 
and mathematics. Amongst his competitors were Mr. Gilbert, 
afterward Vice-Chancellor of the University ; Mr. Ilamfxlen, 
Professor of Divinity; and Mr. Whately, the present Archbish- 
op of Dublin. 

A b<^y from Tunbrid^ School, writing to otJ« of hU former claB^fellown an arcotint 
of thu examination, f^Jl^^^kn with epthusia^m of the epirit of Peel's translationji, e«- 
pecially of bij beautiful rendering of the opening of the second book of Lucretius, 
beginning : 

Suave mari magno tarbantibus shquoTa. ventL? 
E terra uiSLfrnnia alteriuA gpectare laborem ; 

and ending with the picture of the philosopher gazing from hii! calm oriental rest on the 
diBturb«'J, self- wearying, ignorant, erring world. " Often '/f late, •' said one of those to 
whom this latter at the time wa« rea/J, " have I been struck with the fitness of this passage 
to Peel himself, who, having achieve*! so much amid.=<t all the strife of party. coul'J, free 
from its entanglements, see men of all parties gathering the ripening fruit of hia 
measures '' 

Mr. Doubleday describes Peel's college acquirements as ** of 
the solid kind, and such as a laborious student of good practical 
sagacity may always acquire. Of wit, or imagination, or of the 
inventive faculty in general, Mr. Peel had little ; and to such 
men the absence of these more specious qualifications is a nega- 
tive advantage. If they are unable to dazzle others, in the same 
ratio they are exempted from being dazzled by them; and hence 
it is that persons so qualified have a clearer view of the charac- 
ters of those with whom they have to deal, and are better 
adapted to the ordinary business of life than their more accom- 
plished competitors." 

In the course of the year 1808, Mr. Peel completed his 
studies at Oxford. From his very cradle, it may be said, 
he was destined by his father for a politician; and in 1809, 
being of age, he entered Parliament for the borough of 
CasheL 

It is not our province to record the political life of this di.-5- 
tinguished man, which extended beyond forty years. More 
germane i.-5 it in this place to glance at Sir Robert Pe^l as a 
patron of English Literature and men of letters. He tendered a 
baronetcy t j Southey, and conferred on him a pension of .300/. 
a-year, and gave the same amount to Wordsworth ; to James 
Montgomery, 150/. a-year; and to Tytler, to Tennyson, and 
M'Culloch, each 200Z. a-year ; and pensions to Frances Browne, 
and the widow of Thomas Hood. To him Mrs. Somerville and 
Professor Faraday are indebted for their pensions ; nor should 
be forgotten his friendship with Lawrence, Wilkie, and Chan- 
19 



290 School-Days of Eminent 3Ien, 

trey ; his patronage of Collins, Roberts, and Stanfield ; and his 
prompt relief of the sufferings of Haydon.* 

LORD BYRON AT ABERDEEN, HARROW, AND CAMBRIDGE. 

This celebrated man, who, as a poet of description and pas- 
sion, will always occupy a high place, was born Jan. 22, 1788, at 
No. 24, in Holies-street, Cavendish-square, and was christened 
in the small parish church of St. Marylebone. He was the only 
son of Captain John Byron, of the Guards, and Catherine Gordon, 
of Gight, an Aberdeenshire heiress. Owing to an accident at- 
tending his birth, his feet were distorted, a defect which was 
the source of pain and mortification to him during the whole 
of his life. His mother's fortune was soon squandered by her 
profligate husband, and she retired to the city of Aberdeen, to 
bring up her son on a reduced income of about 130/. per annum. 
When about five years old, Byron was sent to a day-school at 
Aberdeen, kept by one Bowers, and remained there a twelve- 
month, as appears by the following entry in the day-book of the 
school : 

" George Gordon Byron. 
lUth NovembtT, 792 
19th Noyember, 1793. — Paid one guinea." 

Of the progress of his learning here, and at other places, we 
have the following record, in a sort of a journal which he once 
began, under the title of " My Dictionary," and which is pre- 
served in one of his manuscript books : 

*' I was pent at five years old, or earlier, to a pchonl kept by a Mr Bowers, who was 
called BoiJsy Bowers, by reason of his dapperness. It was a .«chool for bofh Pexes. I 
learned little there except to repeat by rote the first lesson, of monoayllables (' God niado 
man.' ' Let us love him.'), by hearing it often repeated, without acquiring a letter. 
Whenever proof was made of my progress at home, I repeated these words with the most 
rapid fluency; but on turning over a new leaf, I cotitinued to repeat them, so that the 
narrow boundaries of my first year's accomplishments were detected, my ears boxed 
(which they did not deserve, seeing that it was only by ear that I had acquired my letters), 
and my intellects consigned to a new preceptor He was a very devout, clever little cler- 
gyman, named Hoss, afterward minister of one of the Kirks (TEnst^ I think). Under him 
I made astonishing progress, and I recollect to this day his mild manners and good-na- 
tured painstaking. The moment I could read, my grand passion was /iistory ; and why, I 
know not, but 1 was particularly taken with the battle near the Lake Hegillus in the )<o- 
0ian History, put into my hands the first. Four jears ago, when standir/g on the heights 
of Tusculum, and looking down upon the little round lake that was once Kegillus, and 
which dots the immense expanse below, I remembered my young enthusiasm and my old 
instructor. Afterward I had a very serious, saturnine, but kind young man, named I'at- 
eraon, for a tutor. He was the son of my shoemaker, but a good scholar, as is common 
with the Scotch, He was a right Presbyterian also. \^ ith him I began Latin in Kuddi- 
man'a Grammar, and continued till I went to the grammar-school {Scotice, ' Schule ;' 
Aberdonict, ' Squeel '), where I threaded all the classes to the fcurth, when I was recalled 
to England by the demise of my uncle." 

In one of his Letters he says of his writing : 

•* I acquired this handwriting, which lean hardly read myself, under the fair copies of 



* Notes and Queries, No. 132. 



Anecdote Biographies. 291 

Mr Dnnran, of the same city : T don't think he could plume himself much upon my pro- 
gress. Ilowevi^r, 1 wrote much better than I have ev. r dime since. IIa.ste and agitation 
of one kiud or another, have quite spoilt as pretty a Ecrawl as ever scratched over a 
frank." 

Byron's early religious habits were fostered by his nurse, who 
taujrht him to repeat several of tlie P.-alms ; tiie 1st and 23d 
being among the earliest that he committed to memory ; and 
through the care of this respectable woman, who was herself of 
a very religious disposition, he attained a far earlier and more 
intimate acquaintance with the Sacred Writings than falls to the 
lot of most young people. In a letter which he wrote to Mr. 
Murray from Italy, in 1821, after requesting of that gentleman 
to send him, by the first opportunity, a Bible, he adds: " Don't 
forget this, for I am a great reader and admirer of tho.^e books, 
arid had read them through and through before I was eight 
years old. I speak, as a boy, from the recollected impression of 
that period at Aberdeen in 1796." 

It was about 1798 that Byron is said to have composed his 
first rhymes upon an old friend of his mother's, to whom he had 
taken a dislike ; but he himself tells us that his "first dash into 
poetry" was in 1800, when he "made an attempt at elegy — a 
very dull one." On Byron succeeding to his uncle's title, 
his mother removed with him to the family scat, Newstead 
Abbey, in Nottinghumshire ; and Mr. Rogers, a schoolmaster of 
Nottingham, improved him considerably by reading pa.ssages 
from Virgil and Cicero with him ; but, in less than a year, he 
was conveyed to a quiet boarding-school at Dulwich, where he 
remained two years under the tuition of Dr. Glcnnie. Within 
the next two years, his mother removed him to Harrow, where 
he remained till 1805, when he was sent to Trinity College, Cam- 
bridge. At Harrow, he was an irregular and turbulent scholar, 
though he eagerly devoured all sorts of learning except that 
which was prescribed for him : his talent for declamation was 
the only one by which he was particularly distinguished: he had 
no aptitude for merely verbal scholarship; and his patience 
seemed to have entirely failed him in the study of Greek. He 
frequently gave signs of a frank, noble, and generous spirit, 
which endeared him to his schoolmates, of which Moore, in his 
Life of the poet, relates the following instance: 

'• While Lord Byron and Mr. Peel vrere at Harrow together, a tyrant «ome few years 
older, whose name was * * * *^ claimed a right to fag little Peel, which claim 
(whether rightly or wrongly. I know not) Peel resisted. His re.'^itstance, however, was in 
vain ; * * * * not only subdued him, but determined ali>o to punish the refractory 
ilave, and proceeded foirhwith to put his derermination in practice, by inflicting a kind of 
bastinado on the inner fleshy side of the bo>'s arm, which during the operation, was 
twisted round with some degre« of technical skill, to r nder the paiu more acute. While 
the stripes were succeeding each other, and poor I'eel was writhing under them, Byron saw 
and felt for the nii.-er.v of his friend ; and although he knew he was not strong enough to 
fight * * * * with any hope of success, and that it were dangerous eveu to approach 



292 School-Days of Eminent Men. 

him, he advanced to the scene of action, and with a blush of rage, tears in his eye«, and a 
voice trembling between terror and indignation, asked very humbly if * * * * would 
be pleased to tell him how many stripes he meant to inflict? 'Why?' returned the 
executioner, 'you little rascal, what is that to you?' 'Because, if you please,' said Byron, 
holding out his arm, ' I would take half " 

Upon this, Mr. Moore judiciously remarks : 

" There is a mixture of simplicity and magnanimity in this little trait which is truly 
heroic ; and, however we may smile at the friendship of boys, it is but rarely that the 
friendship of manhood is capable of anything half so generous." 

At Harrow, Byron was occasionally serious ; and he would 
lie by the hour upon an altar-tomb in the churchyard, contem- 
plating the glorious prospect from that elevated site, and view- 
ing the distant metropolis in poetic contrast with the quiet 
beauty of the surrounding country : the monument is to this 
day called "Byron's Tomb."* His vacations were generally 
passed in Nottinghamshire : one of them was spent in the house 
of the Abbe Roufigny, in Took's-court, Chancery-lane, for the 
purpose of studying the French language, but most of his time 
was passed in boxing and fencing, to the no small disturbance 
of the old Abbe's establishment. 

"Though Byron was lame," says one of his Harrow school- 
fellows, " he w^as a great lover of sports, and preferred hockey to 
Horace, relinquished even Helicon for Duck-puddle,t and gave 
up the best poet that ever wrote hard Latin for a game of crick- 
et on the common. He was not remarkable (nor was he ever) 
for his learning ; but he was always a clever, plain-spoken, and 
undaunted boy. I have seen him fight by the hour like a 
Trojan, and stand up against the disadvantage of his lameness 
with all the spirit of an ancient combatant. ' Don't you remem- 
ber your battle with Pitt J (a brewer's son) ?' said I to 

him in a letter (for I had witnessed it) ; but it seems he had for- 
gotten it. * You are mistaken, 1 think,' said he, in reply ; ' it 
must have been with Rice-pudding Morgan, or Lord Jocelyn, or 
one of the Douglases, or George Raynsford, or Pryce (with 
whom I had two conflicts), or with Moses Moore ('the clod'), 
or with somebody else, and not with Pitt ; for with all the above- 
named and other worthies of the fist had I an interchange of 
black eyes and bloody noses, at various and sundry periods; 
however, it may have happened for all that.' " 

At Cambridge, by fits and starts, Byron devoted himself to 
pretty hard study, and continued to cultivate his taste for poetry. 

*In a letter to Mr. Murray, of Api'il, 1822, Byron says : ".There is a spot in the church- 
yard, near the footpath, on the brow of the hill looking toward Windsor, and a tomb 
under a large tree (bearing the name of Peachie or Pcachey), where I used to sit for hours 
and hours when a boy. This was my favorite spot." 

t See Harrow School, described at page 93. 



Anecdote Biographies. 293 

At the same time he indulged in naanj discreditable eccentri- 
cities, and caused great annoyance by keeping a bear and several 
bull-dogs. He frequently evinced the most generous and noble 
feelings, and chose his associates, with one or two exceptions, 
from among the young men of the greatest ability, wit, and 
character, to a few of whom he continued much attached in 
after-life. In 1806, while yet at college, he printed a thin 
quarto volume of poems for private circulation. Next year, he 
brought out his "Hours of Idleness," a collection of fugitive 
poems, which was treated with undue severity hy the Edinburgh 
Review; upon which Byron retaliated in his biting satire of 
English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, published in 1809, a few 
days before he took his oath and seat in the House of Lords. 
In the same year he left England on a classical tour on the 
Continent, which enriched his mind with incidents and poetical 
imagery, and filled it with reflections of some of the finest and 
most melancholy scenery in the world. His travels finished his 
poetical education : its first-fruits was his splendid poem of 
Childe Harold, commencing a long trail of poetic fame; and he 
continued to write until the summer of 1823, when he joined 
with ardor and impetuosity in the cause of " Greek Independ- 
ence :" and early in the following year, while in command of an 
expedition, he died, three months after he had reached the age 
of thirty-six. The bitter grief of his followers and attendants 
of all nations was a proof of his kindness of heart, and his good- 
ness as a master. 

THOMAS ARNOLD AT WINCHESTER AND OXFORD. 

This devoted school reformer was born at West Cowes, in 
the Isle of Wight, in 1795. After being for some years at a 
private school in Wiltshire, he was sent, in 1897, to Winchester 
College, where, according to a Rugbeian writer in the Quarterly 
Review, who well remembers him, " however his dormant capa- 
bilities were recognized by his masters, he gave to his school- 
fellows no great promise of a future excellence, which ripened 
slowly; but even then he showed his love for history rather than 
poetry, and for truth and facts in preference to fiction. Already 
in his school-boy correspondence did he inveigh against the 
incorrectness and exaggerations of the Roman historians ; and 
thus early anticipate the views of Niebuhr." Another reviewer 
says : 

" Along with the elements of classical learning, and a strong Wykehamist feeling, which 
he ever after continued to cherish, he probably acquired at Winchester an adminition, not 
without prejudice, for public education, and the system of English public schools. He 
afterward became distinguished, and sometimes dreaded, as a school reformer ; but hi^ 



294 School-Bays of Eminent 3Ien. 

anxiety to improve, was only in proportion to the degree to which he was attached to the 
system, alike by the associations of his bojhood, and the convictions of his more mature 
experience." — North Bricisk Review, No. 4. 

Arnold went to Oxford in 1811, and was elected as a scholar 
of Corpus Christi College. He did not bring with him any pre- 
cocious amount of erudition ; but he had soon so mastered the 
language and style of Herodotus and Thucydides, that he wrote 
narratives in the manner of either, to the admiration at least of 
his fellow-students. He devoted himself to the historians and 
philosophers of antiquity, rather than to the critical and verbal 
study of the poets, which has always been at Oxford the favor- 
ite lield for philosophical training. Among his fellow-students 
were John Keble, author of the Christian Year, and John Tay- 
lor Coleridge, nephew of the poet, now a Judge of the Queen's 
Bench : with such minds, in the common room of Corpus, young 
Arnold "debated the classic and romantic question," and "dis- 
cussed poetry and history, logic and philosophy." He took a 
high degree, gained the prose prizes, and in 1815 obtained a 
fellowship of Oriel, then reputed to be the blue ribbon of the 
University. Aristotle, Herodotus, and Thucydides formed the 
studies and relaxations of his maturing life ; and on them, 
coupled with the Bible, he thought the knowledge of a Christian 
was the best based. There Arnold acted as tutor; and among 
his colleagues were Copleston, Whately, Keble, Pusey, New- 
man, and other celebrities of great earnestness and intellectual 
activity. He was naturally self-confident; and his independence 
of opinion and dogmatism offended and alarmed many members 
of other colleges ; yet, though a true Christian reformer, what 
he most desired was to turn the capabilities of existing institu- 
tions to better results, to repair and not to overthrow. He was 
virulently misrepresented and opposed; but he pursued his 
course through good and evil report, and lived down calumny 
and opposition ; and great and merited was his triumph when 
he appeared in the crowded theatre of the University as Pro- 
fessor of History. During his residence at the University, he 
availed himself largely of the Oxford libraries, entering upon an 
extensive course of reading, especially in modern history. 
Arnold was then, and continued till the day of his death, an 
enthusiast in his love of Oxford: he admired its system of tuition, 
its learned societies, and its magnificent libraries. A success- 
ful scholar from an English public school, he became a distin- 
guished collegian: with his opinions and friendships formed at 
college, to him Oxford was a world in itself; he loved Oxford 
from lirst to last. 

After a residence of nine years, he removed from Oxford to 



Anecdote Biographies. 295 

Laleliara, married, took private pupils, and passed another nine 
years peacefully in ripening his powers. Thence he removed, 
in 1827, to the head-mastership of Rugby, where his profes- 
sional life began, as we have already illustrated.* (See ante, 
pages 92 and 93.) 

Arnold threw himself into his great work of school reform. 

To do his duty to the utmost was the height of his ambition, those truly Engh'sh senti- 
ments by which Nelson and Wellington were inspired ; and like them he was crowned with 
victory, for soon were verified the predictions of the Provost of Oriel, that he tvould 
chani^e the face of educatinn ihrougk the public school^ of Ens;! and. lie was minded — 
virtute officii — to combine the care of souls to that of the intellects of the rising genera- 
tion and to realize the Scripture in principle and in practice^ without making au English 
school a college of Jesuits. 

A feeling of the failings and shortcomings of our public schools — pointed out by Cow- 
per and others — had long been working among the thoughtful and serious, when Arnold 
led the way, giving shape and guidance to the movement. 

His principles were few: the fear of God was the beginning of his wisdom, and his ob- 
ject was not so much to teach knowledge as the means of acquiring it ; to furnish, in a 
word, the key to the temple. He desired to awaken the intellect of each individual boy, 
and contended that the main movement must come from within, and not from without 
the pupil ; and that all that could be. should be done by him, and not /or him. In a word, 
his scheme was to call forth in the little world of school those capabilities which best be- 
fitted the boy for his career in the great one. He was not only possessed of strength, but 
had the art of imparting it to others ; he had the power to grasp a subject himself, and 
then engraft it on the intellects of others. — Quarterly Review^ No. 204. 

Especially was Arnold an orthodox Oxonian in his belief of 
the indispensable usefulness of classical learning, not only as an 
important branch of knowledge, but as the substantial basis of 
education itself, the importance of which he has thus forcibly 
illustrated : 

" The study of Greek and Latin, considered as mere languages, is of importance mainly 
as it enables us to understand and employ well that language in which we commonly 
thiuk, and speak, and write. It does this because Greek and iLatin are specimens of lan- 
guage at. once highly perfect and capable of being understood without long and minute 
attention ; the study of them, therefore, naturally involves that of the general principles 
of grammar ; while their peculiar excellencies illustrate the points which render language 
clear, and forcible, and beautiful. But our app'ication of this general knowledge must natur- 
ally be to our own languge ; to show uSjWhat are its peculiarities, what its beauties, what its 
defects ; to teach us by the patterns, or the analogies offered by other languages, how the 
effect we admire in them may be produced with a somewhat different instrument. Every les- 
son in Greek or Latin may and ought to be made a lesson in English ; the translation of 
every sentence in Demosthenes or Tacitus is properly an extemporaneous English compo- 
sition ; a problem, how to express with equal brevity, clearness, and force, in our own 
language, the thought which the original author has so admirably expressed in his." t 

SIR HENRY HAVELOCK AT THE CHARTER-HOUSE. 

To the notices of eminent Carthusians, at page 104 of the 
present volume, we must append some further record of Have- 
lock, who took so noble a part in suppressing the Revolt in India 
in 1857, and who so heroically rescued the garrison of Cawn- 
pore, but, within a few days of his victory, sank from the severe 

* We reiterate our recommendation to the reader to turn to the recently published 
Tom Brown's Srhool-days for many a delightful picture of daily life and discipline at 
liugby during Arnold's mastership. 

t Dr Arnold was the first English commentator who gave life to the study of the clas- 
sics, by bringing the facts and manners which they disclose to the test of real life. 



296 School-Days of Eminent Men, 

effects of the climate and the war. His life was throughout an 
eventful career ; strong religious principle underlaid his whole 
character, and he was emphatically pronounced by Lord Har- 
dinge to be " every inch a soldier, and every inch a Christian." 

The late Henry Havelock was the son of William Havelock, 
the sicion of an old family originally seated at Great Grimsby, 
in Lincolnshire, where they are said to have settled in the time 
of King Alfred : local tradition derives their descent from 
Guthrum, the Danish chief* — the conquest of this part of the 
island by the Danes having been complete. 

The deceased General was, however, content to know that his 
parents were English, and traced his lineage no higher than to 
an honest family which resided in Lincolnshire. William Have- 
lock, his father, was born at Guisborough, in Yorkshire, made 
good his position at Sunderland, and then married Jane Carter, 
daughter of a conveyancer of that town. Henry, their illus- 
trious son, was born at Ford Hall, near Sunderland, in 179.5. 
W^hen he was in his fifth year, his father immigrated to the 
south of England, and bought Ingress, at Swanscombe, in Kent. 
In his sixth year, Henry was sent with his elder brother, 
William (killed in the cavalry action at Ramnugger, 1843), as 
a parlor-boarder to a school at Dartford, kept by the Rev. J. 
Bradley, with whom he remained about three years. Courage 
and presence of mind are indicated in the incidents related of 
his childhood. He falls from a tree in Ingress Park, and is 
asked by his father whether he was not frightened ? " No," is 
the reply ; "I was thinking about the bird's eggs." Pie inter- 
feres in a fight, to secure fair play for a school-fellow, and gets a 
black eye. Called to give an account of the disfigurement to 
his master, he is silent, and takes his thrashing like a man. He 
was already an earnest reader of all papers which came in his 
way relating to military affairs, and made himself familiar with 
the movements of Napoleon. His tendencies toward the pro- 
fession of a soldier were so strongly evinced, that his mother 
apprehended disappointment of her project of educating him for 
the law. 

In 1804 he left Mr. Bradley's school for the Charter-house, 
and was placed in the boarding-house of the Rev. Dr. Matthew 
Raine, then head-master. In the memoranda which Havelock 
has left, he thus speaks of his school-fellows : "My most intimate 
friends at the Charter-house were Samuel Hinds, William Norris, 
and Julius Charles Hare. Hinds, a man of taste and a poet, 
spent his early years in traveling, married in France, distin- 
guished himself in one of the colonial assemblies of his native 

*Mr. John Marshman, in the Baptist Magazine, March, 1858. 



Anecdote Biographies. 29T 

island, Barbadoes, at the period of slave emancipation, and died 
at Bath about 1847. 

"Norris, now Sir William Norris, was called to the bar, 
appointed successively Advocate Fiscal, or Queen's Advocate, 
Puisne Judge, and Chief-Justice at Cejlon, and subsequently 
Recorder of Penang. Hare went to Trinity College, Cambridge, 
in 1812, graduated B.A. 1815, and subsequently as M.A., 
became a Fellow and Tutor at Trinity. He is well known to 
the literary and religious world by his joint translation with Dr. 
Connop Thirlwall of part of the Roman history of Niebuhr; 
some volumes of sermons, and several polemical pamphlets. 

"Nearly cotemporary with me and the boys just named, were 
Connop Thirlwall, now Bishop of St. David's ; George Wad- 
dington. Dean of Durham, distinguished as a scholar and a man 
of letters ; George Grote, the historian of Greece ; Archdeacon 
Hale, now Master of the Charter-house ; Alderman Thompson, 
the member for Westmoreland ; Sir William MacNaghten, the 
talented but unfortunate envoy to Cabul ; the Right Honorable 
Fox Maule, now Secretary-of-War ; Eastlake, the painter ; and 
Yates, the actor. 

"In April, 1810, Henry Havelock had gone up into that fifth 
form, of which Walpole, grandson of Sir Robert, was first. Hare 
second, John Pindar third, and Havelock fourth. It consisted, 
of some thirty boys, and lower down in it were Connop Thirlwall 
and Hinds." 

The Rev. Mr. Brock* says : " Not merely thoughtful was the 
young Carthusian as a school-boy. He was religiously if not 
evangelically thoughtful. Thus, in his memoranda, he says : 
* Of Henry Havelock it may be recorded, that there were early 
indications of the strivings of the good Spirit of God in his soul, 
though Satan and the world were permitted for many years to 
triumph.' Certainly, whilst at the Charter-house the evidence 
of those strivings was apparent. 'Methodist' was one current 
taunt; 'canting hypocrite* was another for any youngster who 
would dare to acknowledge God. However, he, with several 
others, as eminent in their several professions afterward as he 
was in his, outbraved the taunt. Without being ostentatious, 
they were faithful to their convictions, and regularly met in one 
of the sleeping-rooms of the Charter-house for religious pur- 
poses. Sermons were read by them with one another, and con- 
versations ensued upon the reading, as to the bearing of the 
truth upon their own character and conduct; and 'Old Phlos' 
became more and more grounded and settled in his resolution to 
fear God." 

*In hiB Biographical Sketch of Sir IIenr>- Havelock, K.C.B. Third Edition. 1808. 



298 SchooUBays of Eminent Men, 

Yet, Havelock*s fear of God was neither doleful nor dismal : 
he could culiivate thaf, and read Greek and Latin with any of 
his associates : "he could search the Scriptures and pray to God, 
and yet do anything that it was manly or virtuous to do, either 
in the play-ground or elsewhere. And there Avas nothing manly 
or virtuous that he was not all the more ready to do because in 
simplicity and godly sincerity he walked with God. As with so 
many otiiers, the religious impressions of Havelock were trace- 
able to the influence and efforts of his mother when he was a 
little boy. It was her custom to assemble her children for read- 
ing the Scriptures and prayer in her own room. Henry was 
always of the party whenever he was at home, and in course of 
time he was expected to take the reading, which he generally 
did. It impressed him ; and under these pltasant circumstances 
he knew, like Timothy, the Holy Scriptures from a ciiild." 

Under Dr. Raine, Havelock mastered ihe Greek and Latin 
classics, and throughout his after-life, as opportunity offered, he 
took great delight in keeping up his acquaintance with the great 
models of antiquity, the effect of which may be traced in the 
perspicuity and vigor of his own style. In 1811, Havelock 
reached the sixth form ; in August, the learned and accomplished 
Dr. Raine died, and was succeeded by Dr. Russell ; in December 
following, Havelock quitted the Charter-house.* 

Havelock had now a profession to choose, and he was advised 
to enter as a student at one of the inns of court, with the view 
of preparing for the law. In 1814, accordingly, he became a 
pupil of the celebrated special pleader, Chitty, and there formed 
an intimacy with his fellow-student, afterward Sir Thomas Tal- 
fourd. Mr. Marshman relates, such was their congeniality of 
habits, that when they left the chambers of Chitty, they beguiled 
many an hour in walking on Westminster Bridge; "but their 
conversation was of other matters than the pleas of the Crown, 
and turned much oftener on the beauties of poetry than upon 
the contents of musty parchments. Havelock used to observe 
in after-life that the last time they took their stroll on 
the bridge, when he was about to embrace the military 
profession, Talfourd noticed the placid progress of the stream 

*IIe was one of the most quiet boys in the school. At the recent meeting of tho Liver- 
pool Collegiate Institution, Mr. Gladstone remarked that Ilavelock's case di.«proved the 
vulgar notion that there is a natural antagonism between corporeal aad mental excellence, 
and that those who are fond of manly sports are rarely good scholars. Thus, Havelock, 
when at the Ch^irter-house, "used to stand looking on while others played, and his gen- 
eral meditative manner procured for him the name of ' Philosopher,' subsequently dimin- 
hhed to 'Old I'hlos'— "yet," added Mr. Gladstone, " he is now distinguisliiug himself by 
a temper, a courage, an activity, a zeal, a cons^istency, and a dogged and dauntless resolu- 
lion, equal at least to any that England has produced this century." 



Anecdote Biographies. 299 

under the arches, and repeated with ecstacy that line of 
Wordsworth — 

" The river glideth at its own sweet will." 

But the law was not the sphere for a man of Havelock's tem- 
perament. The tastes of his family were military : his brother 
William, described by Napier as "one of the most chivalrous 
officers in the service" during the Peninsular war, obtained for 
Henry a commission, in I8I0. 

"Under these circumstances," says the Rev. Mr. Brock, 
"Havelock's destination in life was changed and definitely 
fixed. He saw an opportunity of making his way honorably, of 
which, through the reverses in his family fortunes, he felt bound 
to take advantage ; and having no scruples about the compati- 
bility of war with Cliristianity, he became a soldier. He 
exchanged the pen for the sword. Instead of giving himself up 
to Blackstone, he took up Vattel for careful study. AVhen he 
would have had to devote attention to 'cases,' he came to write 
'dispatches.' For a Generalship rather than for a Judgeship 
was he henceforward a competitor. His fellow-student at 
special pleading rose to be Mr. Justice Talfourd, of the Com- 
mon Pleas. He rose to be gazetted as Sir Henry Havelock, of 
Lucknow." * 

He had resolved to go to India, whither he proceeded in 1823; 
here he was soon recognized as a man who would do what was 
right, and feared nothing. Havelock was accustomed to regard 
his transference to India as the most critical epoch of his exist- 
ence ; and the reason is thus recorded in his own memoranda — 
in which he is never mentioned but in the third person : 

"A far more important event, as regarded the interests of the 
writer, ought to have been recorded whilst narrating the events 
of 1823, for it was while he was sailing across the wide Atlantic 
toward Bengal that the spirit of God came to him with its offers 
of peace and mandate of love, which, though for some time 
resisted, were received, and at length prevailed. There was 
wrought that great change in his soul which has been productive 
of unspeakable advantage to him in time, and he trusts has 
secured him happiness through eternity." 

* " Not to be overlooked,"' Fajs the Kev. Mr. Brock, " is the memorable death of the two 
men so marjy years afterward ; the one on the bench at Stafford, whilst right eloquently 
pleading for greater sympathy between rich and poor ; the other in camp at Lucknow, 
exiiausted by his exertions for relieving helpless women and children from disgrace and 
death." — Biographical Sketch. p<ige 17. 



APPENDIX. 



UNIVERSITY HONORS. 

DURING the printing of this volume, the Author's atten- 
tion was drawn to a very able and interesting inquiry, in 
the Journal of Psychological and Mental Pathology, New Series, 
No. IX. — January, 1858. This paper, entitled " Body and 
Mind," is from the pen of the Editor, Dr. Forbes Winslow, by 
whose permission is reprinted the following important Return, 
made in order to correct the very prevalent mistake in supposing 
that men who have attained great distinction and high honors at 
our two English Universities, do not, in after-life, occupy the 
most eminent j^ositions at the Bar, on the Bench, and in the 
Senate. First, as to 

Oxford. — Earl of Eldon, English Prize Essay, 1771 ; Lord Tenterden (Lord Cliief Jus- 
tice of the King's Bench), EngHsh Essay, 1786, Latin verse, 1784; Sir W. E. Taunton 
(Judge in Court of King's Bench), English Essay, 1793 ; J. Phillimore (Professor of Civil 
Law), English Essay, 1798 ; Sir C. E Gray (Chief Justice of Bengal), English Essay, 1808 : 
Sir J. T. Coleridge (Judge in Court of Queen's Bench), English Essay, 1813, Latin verse, 
1810, Latin Essay, 1813, lat class Classics, 1812 ; Herman Merivale (Professor of Political 
Economy), English Essay, 1830, 1st class Classics, 1827 : Roundell Palmer (Deputy Stew- 
ard of the University), Latin Essay, 1835, Latin verse, 1831, English verse, 1832, 1st class 
Classics, 1834 ; Lord Colchester, Latin verse, 1777 ; Sir J. Richardson (Judge in Common 
Pleas), Latin verse, 1792,- Sir Christopher Puller (Chief Justice at Calcutta). Latin verse, 
1794; G. K. Rickards (Professor of PoHtical Economy), English verse, 1830, 2d class 
Classics, 1833 ; Nassau W. Senior (Professor of PoUtical Economy), 1st class Classics, 1811 ; 
Sir Richard Bethell (Attorney-General, University Counsel), 1st class Classics, 1818; Hon- 
orable J. C. Talbot (Deputy High Steward), lat class Classics, 1825 ; Travers Twiss (Regius 
Professor of Civil Law), 2d class Classics, 1830. 

Cambridge. — Sir F. Maseres (Baron, Exchequer), 4th Wrangler, 1752, Senior Medalist ; 
Sir Elijah Impey (Chief Justice, Fort William, Bengal), 2d Senior Optime, 1756, Junior 
Medalist; Sir j' Wilson (Judge, Common Pleas), Senior Wrangler, -.1761 ; Lord Alvanley 
(Chief Justice, Common Pleas), 12th Wrangler, 1766 ; the late Lord EUenborough (Chief 
Justice, King's Bench), 3d Wrangler, 1771, Senior Medalist; Sir S. Lawrence (Judge, 
Common Pleas), 7th Wrangler, 1771 ; Sir H. Russell (Judge in India), 4th Senior Optime, 
1772; the late Lord Manners (Chancellor of Ireland), 5th Wrangler, 1777; Chief Justice 
Warren, of Chester, 9th Wrangler, 17S5 ; the late John Bell, Senior Wrangler, 1786, Senior 
Smith's Prizeman ; Sir J Littledale (Judge ih Court of Queen's Bench), Senior Wrangler, 
1787, Senior Smith's Prizeman ; Lord Lyndhurst (late Lord Chancellor), 2d Wrangler, 
1794, Junior Smith's Prizeman ; Sir JohnBeckett (Judge Advocate), 5th Wrangler, 1795 ; 
the late Sir John Williams (Judge, Queen's Bench), l8th Senior Optime, 1798 ; the late Sir 
N. C Tindal (Chief Justice, Common Pleas), 8th Wrangler, 1799, Senior Medalist ; the late 
Sir L. Shadwell (Vice-Chancellor of England), 7th Wrangler, 1800, Junior Medalist; 
Starkie (Downing Professor of Law, University Counsel), Senior Wrangler, 1803, Senior 
Smith's Prizeman ; Lord AVensleydale, 5th Wrangler, 1803, Senior Medalist ; the late Sir 



302 Appendix. 

T. Coltman (Judge, Common Pleas), 13fh Wrangler, 1803; Lord Chief Baron Pollock, 
Senior Wrangler, 1806, Senior Smith's Prizeman ; Lord Langdale, Senior V\rangler, 1808, 
Senior Smith's Prizeman ; the late iiaron Alderson, Senior Wrangler, 1809. Senior Smith's 
Prizeman and Senior Medalist ; Sir W. II. Maule (Judge, Common Pleas). Senior Wran- 
gler, 810, Senior Smith's Prizeman ; Baron Piatt (Exchequer), 5th Junior Optime, 810 ; 
Chambers (Judge of Supreme ' ourt. Bombay). 5th Wrangler, ISU ; Lord Cranworth, 17th 
Wrangler, 1812; Mirehouse (Author of Law of Tithes, and Common Serjeant of City of 
London 1, 13th Senior Optime, 1812 ; Sir J. Romilly (Downing Proft^.ssor of Law, and Pro- 
fesisor of Law, University College, London), 4th Wrangler, 1813; Vice-Chancel lor Kinders- 
lev, 4th Wrangler, 1814"; Sir B H. Malkin (Chief Justice of Prince of Wales's Island), 3d 
Wrangler, 1818; Lord Justice Turner, 9th Wrangler, 1819; the late Fl. C. Ilildvard 
(Queen's Counsel), 12th Senior Optime, 1823; Mr. John Cowling, Q.C, MP. (Uni- 
versity Counsel, and Deputy High Steward), Senior Wrangler, 1824, Senior Smith's Prize- 
man ; Vice-Chancellor Wood 24th Wrangler, 1824; Vioe-Chancellor Parker, 7th Wran- 
gler. 1825; Mr. Loftus T. Wigram, Q.C. (M.P. for University), 8th Wrangler, 1825; 
Chief Justice Martin (New Zealand), 26th Wrangler, 1829, 3d in 1st class Classics, and 
Junior Medalist. 

DonuN —""795, Sir T. Lefroy (Chief Justice of Queen's Bench), gold medal ; "'800, Sir J. 
L. Foster (Judge, Common Pleas, M.P. for University, 1807), gold medal ; 1802, P C. 
Crampton (Queen's Counsel, Judge, Queen's Bench), gold medal ; 1803, F. Blackburne 
(Lord Chancellor of Ireland), gold medal ; 1811, R. II Greene (Baron of Exchequer), gold 
medal ; 1823, J. H. Moaahan (Chief Justice, Common Pleas), gold medal. 

TRIPOS. 

The original Tripos., from which the Cambridge class lists have 
derived their names, was a three legged stool, on which, on Ash- 
Wednesday, a bachelor of one or two years' standing (called 
therefrom the Bachelor of the Stool) used formerly to take his 
geat, and play the part of a public disputant in the quaint pro- 
ceedings which accompanied admission to the degree of B.A. In 
course of time, the name was transferred from the stool to him 
that sat on it, and the disputant was called the Tripos; thence it 
passed to the day when the stool became a post of honor ; then 
to the lists published on that day, containing the seniority of 
commencing B.A.'s arranged according to the pleasure of the 
Proctors; and, ultimately, it obtained the enlarged meaning now 
universally recognized, according to which it stands for the 
examination, whether in mathematics, classics, moral or physical 
science, as well as for the list by which the result of that exami- 
nation is made known. — Notes and Queries, No. 117. 

ST. Paul's school founded. (Pages 48, 49.) 

Among \\\e fasciculi of Commemoration Addresses recited in 
praise of Dean Colet, the Founder of St. Paul's School, are 
entitled to special mention, "The number of the Fish," a lay, by 
the Rev. Dr. Kynaston, the High Master, illustrating Colet's 
prescribed number of scholars : " There shall be taught in the 
schole children of all nations indifferently, to the number of 
CLiii." — Statutes. Another of the learned High Master's Com- 
memorations is entitled Ipsum Audite — "Hear ye Him ;" Hym- 
nus Gratulatorius super Fundalione D. Pauli Scholae. In Latin 
and English Trochaic Verse, with Notes and Preface. Appo- 
sition, 1857. 



Appendix, 803 

The epigraph to this Hymn of Gratulation is as follows : 

"Supra cafhedrana prseceptoris sedet puer Jesus singulari 
opere, docentis gestu ; quem totus grex, adiens scholam ac re- 
linquens, hymno salutat. Et iram net Patris facies dicentis, 
Jpsum aiidite : nam haic verba me auctore adscripsit." — Erasmi 
Epistolce. 

" Over the master's chair is set an image of the child Jesus, 
of admirable woi'k, in the attitude of teaching; whom all the boys, 
on entering and leaving, salute with a hj mn. And there is a 
representation of the Father, saying. Hear ye Him: the>e words 
lie added by my advice." — Letter of Erasmus on the Founding 
of St. Paul's School. 

Of St. Paul's, Knight, in his Life of Colet, states: "This noble 
impulse of Christian charity, in the founding of Grammar-schools, 
was one of the providential ways and means for bringing about 
the blessed Reformation ; and it is therefore observable, that 
within thii-ty years before it, there were more Grammar-schools 
erected and endowed in England, than had been in three hun- 
dred years preceding." 

Among the memorable things said of eminent Paulines is 
Archdeacon Tennison's tribute, in his Sermons preached before 
the scholars — to John, Duke of Marlborough, " who never be- 
sieged a town which he did not take, nor fought a battle which 
he did not win." 

" But for St. Paul's School," said Lord John Russell, at the 
Apposition Banquet, 1846, " Milton's harp would have been 
mute and inglorious, and Marlborough's sworl might have 
rusted in its scabbard." 



GENERAL INDEX. 



Abbott, G'orqe, Archbishop of Canter- 
bury, 163. 

AddisoQ at Lichfield, Charter-house, and 
Oxford, 193; memories of, 196 j Steele 
and Arbuthnot, 132, 133. 

Aldgiite Free Schools, 133 

Alfred, birth of, 7; education of. 7; schools 
of, 8. 

•'Anatomy of Melancholy," the author of, 
100. 

Angers, Arthur Wellesley at, 258. 

Anglo-Norman ^ chool.s, rise of, 21. 

Anglo-Saxon Schools, rise of, 6. 

Anne, literature in the r^ign of. 132. 

Arbuthnot. his sound English, 133. 

Archery, origin of, 9, 10. 

Arnold, Dr. ihomas, his college associate.", 
294; head-ma.ster of Rugby, 92; at Ox- 
ford, 294 ; his love of Oxford, 294 ; his 
school reform, 29-3 ; at Winchester, 293. 

Arrow, Silver, shooung for, at Harrow, 95. 

Ascham, tutor to Lady Jane Grey, 78 ; his 
'' Schoolmaster," 77; tutor to Queen Eli- 
zabeth, 77.> 

Aubrey, John, schools in his times, 115 ; his 
schools in Wiltshire. 175 

Augustan age of literature, 1.32. 

Autobiographists, female, 126 

Autograi>h of Dryden at V\ estminster School, 
181. 

Bacon, Lord, at Cambridge, 161 ; influence 

of his writings, 115. 116. 
Bacon, Roger, educational reformer, 26. 
Baker's Chronicle, 110. 
Balliol College, Oxford, boots forbidden to 

be worn at, 273. 
Banks. Sir Joseph, at Harrow. Eton, and 

Oxford, 231 ; how he learnt botany, 232. 
Barrow, Isaac, at Charter-house, 179. 
Bartholomew, J aint. Schools, and the eilrer 

arrow, 59. 
Beaumont and Fletcher, educated, 89. 
Bede, "the Wise Saxon," 6. 
Bedford Free Grammar School, 74. 
Bell and Lancaster, system of, 139. 
Benefit of Clergy, 22. 
Bible, the, and Edward VI., 67; translated 

by Wickliffe, 83 ; new translation of, by 
I order of James I. 97. 

; Birmingham Free Grammar School, 73. 

Blake, admiral, at Bridgwater and Oxford, 

166 
Blake, William, and the first Charity School, 

i2r. 

Bloomfield, Robert, hia "Farmer's Boy," 

253. 
Blues, eminent, 71 . 
Boating at Westminster and Eton, 85. 
Bolingbroke, Lord, 13J. 

20 



Books, the earliest, 11 ; early printed, 63 , 
scarce at Oxford, 42 

Boyer and Field, masters at Christ's Hospi- 
tal, 276. 

Boyle, the Hon. Robert, his education and 
love of science, 176. 

Bradgate, Lady Jane Grey at, 78. 

Brindley, how he taught himself mechanica, 
217. 

Briti.sh games, early, 1. 

British Sluseum established, 134, 135. 

Britons, early education of, 1. 

Brougham, Lord, education of, 146 ; on Pub- 
lic Education, 146. 

Buchanan, tutor to James I., 96- 

Bunyan, John, his school, boyhood, and fa- 
vorite books. 177, 178, 179. 

Burke, Edmund, at Ballitore and Dublin, 
223. 224 ; his favorite authors, 225 ; and 
the Shackletons, 224. 

Burleigh, Lord, at Cambridge, 153 ; his edu- 
cation, 89 ; his plan of study, 154. 

Burns, Robert, " the Ayrshire plowman," 
243 ; instructed'by his father, 244 ; his love 
of reading, 243; his teacher, Murdoch, 
'.45. 

Burton, Robert, education of, 101. 

Busby, Dr , his discipline at Westminster, 
168 ; education at Westminster and Ox- 
ford, 167, 168; head-master of West- 
minster School, 84. 

Butler Samuel, at Worcester and Cam- 
bridge, 171. 

Bryon, Lord, his autobiography, 290 ; at 
Cambridge, 291 ; his early religious habits, 
29 1; his first verses, 291 ; his lameness, 
290 ; and Sir Robert Peel at Harrow, 291 ; 
*' Byon's tomb," 292. 

Cambridge, the sciences at, 119. 

Cambridge University, fare in 1550, 156. 

Cambridge University, rise of, 24. 

Camden and Ben Jonson, 155. 

Camden at Christ's Hospital and West- 
minster, 155. 

Camden, Lord, at Eton and Cambridge. 213. 

Canning, George, his literary tastes, 261 ; at 
Eton and Oxford, 260, 261. 

Canterbury Schools, seventh century, 5. 

Canute, King-, a poet, 11. 

Carew, Sir Peter, a truant, 80. 

Carpenter, John, and the City of London 
School, 47. 

Carthusians, eminent, 104. 

Caxton, the first English printer, education 
in his time, 150. 

Charity Schools, rise of, 126. 

Charles I., his accomplishments, 105; edu- 
cation of, 104; literature in his reign, 
108. 



806 



General Index. 



Charles TI incorporates the Royal Society, 
122 ; JIathematical School, Christ's Hos- 
pital, 122 ; his patronage of letters, 121 ; 
visits Westminster School, 84 

Charter of the Royal Society, 122. 

Charter-house Poor Brethren, 104. 

Charter-house School founded, 102. 

Chatham, Lord, at Eton and Oxford, 207. 

Chaucer, schools in the age of, 29. 

Chelsea, Arthur Wellesley at, 256. 

Chelsea, Sir Thomas More at, 62. 

Chelsea College founded, 97. 

Chivalrous education, system of, 55- 

Christ's Hospital buildings, 70 ; founded by 
Edward VI., 68; Five^and-thirty years 
ago? '^y C Lamb, 275, 276. 

Church schools, enrly, 22. 

Churches, schools in, 39. 

Clarendon, Lord, education of, 100 ; at Ox- 
ford and the Temple, 169. 1 70. 

Clarendon Press, Oxford, established, 133. 

Clerk, or " Clericus," 4. 

Clergy, benefit of, 22. 

Clergy, education of the, 4. 

Clive, Lord, his daring boyhood, 220; at 
Madras, 220. 

<' Cocker's Arithmetic," 119. 

Coke, Sir Edward, education of, 156 ; his 
legal studies, 15o. 

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, at Cambridge, 
270 ; at Christ's Hospital, 269 ; a glutton 
of books, 270. 

Colet, Dean, founds St. Paul's School, 49. 

Collins, William, poet, at Winchester and 
Oxford, 218, 219 

Colleges, object of. 46- 

Comiiies, Philip de, his character of Henry 
VII., 59. 

Conveyancing. Anglo-Saxon, 4. 

Cook, Sir Anthony, and his four learned 
daughters, 79. 

Cook, Captain, education of on board ship, 
221. 

« Cotter's Saturday Night," the, by Burns, 
246 

Cowley, " Of Myself," 173 ; at Westminster, 
172. 

Cowpcr at Market-street and Westminster, 
226 ; his recollections of the play-ground, 
227. 

Cranmer, boyhood of, 65 ; godfather to Ed- 
ward VI., 65. 

Crichton, the Admirable, at Edinburgh, and 
his career, 89, 161, 162. 

" Criss-cross Row, the," 143. 

Crofte, Sir R., tutor of Edward VI., 51. 

Cromwell, Oliver, boyhood and education, 
120 ; at Cambridge, i20 ; at Huntingdon, 
120 

Croyland Abbey, ruins, schools, etc., 17. 

Curll castigated by the Westminster boys, 
185. 

Curtain tradition at Westminster School, 83. 

Danes, the destroyers of learning, 11. 

Davy, or Davie. Adam, 28. 

Davy, Sir Humphry, his amusements, 277; 
his childhood, 277; obtains heat from ice, 
279 ; at Penzance, 277 ; poetry, 278 ; 
safety-lamp, 281 ; studies, 287 ; in medi- 
cine and chemistry, 280 ; President of the 
Royal Society, 281 ; at the Royal Institu- 
tion, 281. 



Defoe at Stoke Newington, 123. 

Disputations of the Anglo-Norman schools, 
2i. 

Drayton, Michael, education of, 89. 

Druids, schools of the, 2 ; their system, 2. 

Dryden's cut autograph at Westminster. 84 ; 
his studies and works, 181 ; at Tichmarsh, 
Westminster, and ( ambridge, ISO. 

*' Dulce Domum " at Winchester, 32. 

Dullness of Sir Dudley North, 188. 

Dullness of Waller, 166. 

Duns Scotus, 28. 

Dunstan, St., the scholar of Glastonbury, 10. 

Education, Central Society of, established, 

146 ; good in the seventeenth century, 

]08 : at home, 39 ; National Board of, 140 ; 

public. Sir T Moore, on, 63; grant by 

Parliament, 146. 
Edward I., scholars in his reign, 28. 
Edward II , education of, 27. 
Edward III , his accomplishments, 28. 
Edward IV., and his tutors, 50. 
Edward V. in Ludlow ( astle, 52. 
Edward VI , boyhood and learning of, 65 ; 

founds Christ's Hospital, 68 ; his journal, 

66 ; his tutors, 52. 
Edward's, King, Schools, 72. 
Edward the Black Prince, scholarship of, 30. 
" Eikon Basilike," authorship of, 106 
Eldon, Lord, and Dr. Johnson, at Oxford, 

238. 
Eldon, Lord, at Newcastle and Oxford, 238, 

238 
Eldon School, at Vanxhall, 238. 
Elizabeth, Queen, education of, 76; founds 

Westminster School, 82 ; statesmen, poets, 

and dramatists of her reign, 88. 
English language, formation of the, 12 ; 

settlement of, 26. 
English, sound writing in the 17th century, 

126. 
Essays, Lord Bacon's, 116. 
Eton College, building of, 44; founded by 

Henry VI., 42 ; completed by Henry VII., 

44 ; expenses, early, at, 45. 
Eton Montem, 45. 
Etonians, eminent, 46. 
Evelyn, John, at vi otton, Eton, and Oxford, 

173 ; memoirs and diary, 174. 
Evelyn, Mrs., 128. 

Falkland, Lord, his character, 170. 
Female education in 1371, 40 ; school of 

More, 62. 
Ferguson, James, teaches himself the claBsic8 

and astronomy, 212. 
Ferguson, Robert, at Newington, 124. 
Flogging in schools, 81. 
Foot-ball at Rugby, 92. 
Free schools, rise of, 126. 
French in the age of Chaucer, 30. 
Fuller, 'Ihomas, his memory, 102; his 

"Schoolmaster," 102. 

Games at Harrow School, 94. 

Gay, John, at Barnstaple, 202. 

Gav, Swift, and Pope, their friendship, 
202 

George I. and George II., reigns of, 134. 

George III., education of, 35. 

George IV., education of, 144 ; his patron- 
age of literature, 145. 



General Index. 



807 



Gibbon nt Kingston, Westminster, and Ox- 
ford, 229, 230 

Gifford, VMlliam, scholar and critic, 239. 

Glcistonbury scholars 10 

Gloucester, Sunday Schools first founded 
at, 138. 

Goodman, Dean, and Dr. Andrews, West- 
minster masters. 82. 

*' Goody Two Shoes," authorship of, 271. 

Gower, the poet, and Richard II , 85. 

Grammar School, the first, 48 ; of the ITth 
century, 115. 

Grammarian and poet laureate, an eminent 
one, 59. 

Gray at Eton and Cambridge, 215 ; ode on 
Eton College, 2 6, 

Gray and \\ est's letters, 215, 216. 

Gresham College founded, 88. 

Grey, Lady Jane, and her schoolmaster, 
Itoger Apcham, 78. 

Gunter's Scale, 1 8. 

Hale, Sir Matthew, at Oxford and Lincoln's- 

inn, 70 ; his plan of instruction, 109. 
Ilalstead, Mi.«s, her lives of Hichard III. and 

Margaret Beaufort, 58, 59 
Hastings, Warren, at Westminster, 228, 229. 
Harrovians, eminent, 95. 
Harrow school buildings, 94, 95 ; foundation 

of, 93. 
Harper. Sir W , and the Bedford Grammar 

School, 75. 
Harvey. Dr. William, education of, 90. 
Havelock, Sir Henry, at the Charter-house 

School, lOi 
Henry I., education of, 18. 
Henry II., his love of letters, 19. 
Henry III., education of, 26 
Henry IV., his accomplishments, 35. 
Henry V. at Queen's College, Oxford, 36 ; 

his college associates, 38. 
Henry VI., childhood and youth cf, 41 ; his 

education, 42. 
Henry VII., troubled boyhood of, 56 ; was 

he an Etonian ? 58 
Henry VIII , early life and character of, 60 ; 

education and accompli.**hments of, 61. 
Henry, Prince, education of, 87 ; house of, 

in Fleet-street. y8 ; his patronage of 

learned men, 99. 
Henry, Philip, at Westminster, 182. 
Herbert, Lord, in Shropshire, 165 ; his plan 

of education, 1 8 
Highgate Grammar School, 127. 
Hill, Lord, his afftctionate disposition, 267 ; 

at Chester, 268 ; at Waterloo, 269. 
Holbein's Charter Picture at Christ's Hospi- 
tal, 69 
Hooker, Kichard, at Heavitree and Oxford, 

157, i58. 
Hornbook of the 18th century, 143 ; history 

of the, 140. 
Horrocks, the astronomer, 119. 
Hunter, John, want of education, 222. 
Hutchinson, Mrs., 126. 
Hymns, Morning and Evening, by Bishop 

Ken, 187 ; Dr. Watts's, 198. 

Ingulphus at Westminster, 17. 

James I., education of, 95 , literature of bis 
reign, i*9. 



James I. of Scotland, musical education of, 

39. 
James II., boyhood and education of, 124; 

his governor, 124- 
John of Salisbury, 19. 
John, troubled reiga of, 25. 
Johnson, Dr., and George HI., 138 ; at 

Lichfield, Stourbridge, and Oxford, 2J7, 

208, 209, 2l0; memorials of Johnson at 

Lichfield, 211. 
Jones, Sir William, at Harrow and Oxford, 

232, 233 ; his plan of study, 234. 
Jonson, Ben, education of, 90 
Judd, Sir A., at Tunbridge School, 74. 

Ken, Bishop, at Winchester, 185 ; at Oxford, 

186; his Morning and Evening Hymns, 

187. 
King's College, Cambridge, founded by 

Henry VI , 46. 
King's College and School, London, founded, 

145. 

Ladies, learned English, 79 ; in the reign of 

. Charles I., 108. 

Lamb, Charles, at Christ's Hospital, 274. 

Lanfruuc, his schools, 16. 

Latimer, boyhood of, 64. 

Latin idiom in the reign of James I., 99. 

Latinity in the 2th century, 20. 

Lawrence, Sir Thomas's precocity, 254. 

" Learning is better than house and land," 9. 

Lectures at Gresham College, 88. 

Letters, e:ir!y English, 38. 

1 ibrary, the King's, in the British Museum, 
137. 

Library of Richard of Bury, 37. 

Lichfield Free Grammar-school, 78. 

Literary Fund, the, founded, 145. 

Literature of the 7th century, 125. 

Locke at Westminster and Oxford, 114; 
education of, 114; his system of educa- 
tion, 113; his "Thought.s on Education," 
115 ; on the Understanding, 114. 

Logarithms, invention of, 17. 

Loudon University College and School 
founded, 145. 

Lovell, Lord, and Richard III., 56. 

Ludlow < astle, Edward IV. and V. in, 50, 
50 ; Milton and Butler at, 50 

Lyon, John, the founder of Harrow School, 
93. 

Macaulay, Lord, his account of Warren 

Hastings, 2l8, 229 
"Manners makyth Man," 149. 
Mansfield, Lord, at Westminster, 206. 
Manuscript books, costliness of, 51. 
Marlborough, the Great Duke of, at St. 

Paul's School. 194. 
Marvell at Hull and Cambridge. 175. 
Mary, Queen, her infancy and childhood, 75. 
Mary, wife of William III., 131. 
.Mary, Queen of Scots, education of, 76. 
Mathematical boys at Christ's Hospital, 71, 

122. 
Merchant Taylors' School founded, 86; 

scholars, eminent, 87. 
Milner, the brothers Jo.«eph and Isaac, 238. 
Milton, education of. 111 ; his love of letters, 

112 ; his .<!ystem of education, 112, 113. 
Monastic schools, 7th century, 6. 



308 



General Index, 



Monitorial system of Bell and Lancaster, 139. 
Monks, the transcribers and illuminators of 

MSS., 12. 
More, Sir Thomas, boyhood and rise of, 151 ; 

at Oxford, 152 ; school of, 62. 
MorningtoD, Lord, his musical taste, 250. 
Morton, Cardinal, and Sir T. More, 151. 
Musical education, early, 40. 

Napier's Bones, or Rods, 118. 

Nelson, Lord, his schools in Norfolk, 240; 
he first goes to sea, 2i2. 

Newcastle, the Duchess of, 126. 

News, letter of, 1701-10, 111. 

Newspapers, their educational aid, 111 ; in- 
troduced, 110. 

Newton's birthplace, 190 ; at Grantham and 
Cambridge, 91, 192. 

Nobility, ill-educated, 61. 

Nonconformist schools at Islington and New- 
ington Green, 123 

Norman French, 26. 

"Novum Organum" of Lord Bacon, 117. 

North, Sir Dudley, his adventures, 189. 

" Old Phlos " at the Charter-house, 104, 298. 
"Opus Majus " of Roger Bacon, 27. 
Owen, Dame, her free schools, 127. 
Oxford discipline, rigid, 81 ; poet laureate 

at, 59 ; the sciences at, 118 ; University, 

ri^e of, 23. 

Paley, Archdeacon, at Giggleswick and Cam- 
bridge, 230 ; on teaching, 231. 

Pancake custom on >hrove Tuesday, at 
Westminster School, 83. 

Parr, Dr., at Harrow and Cambridge, 234, 
235 ; on Tenderness to Animals, 235 

Paston, Sir John, books for, 57 ; and Edward 
IV., 55 ; William, at Eton, 44. 

Paul's, St., School, founded, 48. 

Paulines, eminent, 50. 

Peacham's ''Complete Gentleman," 107. 

Peel, Sir llobert, at Harrow, 288 ; at Oxford, 
289 ; in Yorkshire, 288. 

Penn, William, atChigwell and Oxford, 192. 

I'eter of Blois, 19. 

" Pilgrim's Progress," the, 177-179. 

Pitt, Mr., boyhood of, 252. 

Plays at \Vestminster School, 86. 

" Pons Asinorum," 27. 

Pope, childhood of, 199 ; paraphrase, by, 
201 _; and Prior, 133; schools and self- 
tuition, 198, 199, 200 ; in Windsor Forest, 
200. 

Porson at Happesburgh, Eton, and Cam- 
bridge, 246, 247, 24^ ; his classical anno- 
tations and emendations, 245 ; in Essex- 
court, Temple, 249 ; his habits and char- 
acter, 249. 

Primer and Hornbook, the, 140. 

Printing, introduction of, 53- 

Prior, Matthew, at Westminster and Cam- 
bridge, 195. 

Psalms of David, paraphrased by Lord 
Bacon, 117. 

Pvaikes, Robert, founder of Sunday Schools, 

138. 
Raleigh, Sir Walter, education of, 89. 
Recorde, Robert, 117. 
Reformation, schools before the, 73. 



Revolution, the, schools at the time of, 127. 
Richard I., the poet king, 22 
Richard II., education of, 35 ; and Gower, 85. 
Richard III., childhood and education of, 

54 : at Middleham ' astle, 56 
Ridley, Bishop, and Edward YL, 68. 
Roman-British Schools, 3 
Roman Education in England, -3. 
Roper, Margaret, More's daughter, 63. 
Royal Society incorporated, 122. 
Royal Society of Literature, 145. 
Rugby gold medal, 93; school, 90. 
Rugbeians, eminent, 93. 

Saxon language, the, 12. 

School, the Blue Coat, 70 ; Charter-house, 
founded. 102; City of London, 47; St. 
Clement's ( harity, 130; Eldon, at Vaux- 
hall, 238 ; Eton founded, 43 ; Grammar, 
the first, 48; Harrow, founded, 93 ; High- 
gate Grammar, 127 ; King's College, Lon- 
don, 145; Ladies' Charity, 130; Lan- 
franc's, 16 ; London University, 145 ; 
Mercers', 48 ; Merchiint Taylors', founded, 
86, 87 ; Milton's, 112 ; Sir Thomas More's, 
62; Rugby founded, 90; Tennison's, 131 ; 
Westminster, founded, 81 ; Winchester, 
founded. 31. 

Schools in the age of Chaucer, 29 ; Alfred's, 
7; Anglo-Norman, 21; Anglo-Saxon, 6; 
Canterbury, 5 ; Church, 22 ; in churches, 
38; Croyland Abbey, 17; Druid, 2 ; Early 
British, 1 ; Free or Charity, rise of, 126, 
127 ; Glastonbury, 10 ; Kensington Gram- 
mar. 128 ; King Edward's, at Birmingham, 
Lichfield, Tunbridge, and Bedford, 72 ; 
Monastic, 5 ; Nonconformist, 123 ; Owen's 
Free, li;7 ; Parochial, early, 38 ; Roman 
British, 3 ; in the 17th century, 115 ; Sun- 
day, founded, 138 ; Westminster, 129. 

'' Schoolmaster, the Good," by Fuller, 101. 

" Schoolmaster, the, by A.'^cham, 77, 78. 

Schoolmasters of the ^th century. 175. 

Scientific Treatises first in English, 117. 

Scott, Sir Walter, his academical attain- 
ments 265 ; at Bath and Edinburgh, 263 ; 
his first verses, 265 ; sees Robert Burns, 
265 ; and Mr. Jeffrey, 267 ; his lameness, 
262 ; his love of reading, 266 : his poetry, 
267 ; at Sandy-knowe, 262, 263. 

Scriptorium of the abbeys, 12. 

Scriveners in Chaucer's time, 29. 

Selden, John, education of, 101. 

Shakspeare, education of, 164 : at Stratford 
Grammar-school, 164; a militiaman, 165. 

Shenstone at Hale.*-Owen and Oxford, 213, 
214; his "Schoolmistress," 213. 

?herborne, King's School at, 73. 

Sheriff, Lawr , founds Rugby School, 91. 

Sidney, Sir Philip, at Shrewshurv and Ox- 
ford, 89, 158 ; portrait of, 159, 160. 

Society for the Propagation of the Gospel 
established, 132. 

Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge 
established, 131, 1«2. 

South, Dr., at AVestminster, 184, 185. 

Southey, Robert, his autobiography, 271 ; 
his first books, 272 ; at Bristol Scuool, 272 ; 
and Coleridge, 274 ; at Corston, 272; his 
handwriting, 272 ; his love of Shakspeare, 
272 ; his translations, 273 ; at Westminster 
and Oxford, 273. 



Greneral Index, 



309 



Spenser at Cambridge, 90, 157. 
Sporta of the old London scholars, 19. 
Steam-engine, Marquis of Worcester's, 123 ; 

James Watt's childhood, 283. 
Stephen, education of, 19. 
Stephenson, George, his clay engines, 282 ; 

a poor "cow-boy," 282; at hLs engine, 

283 ; his first lesson, 283 ; his locomotives, 

284 ; at a night school, 284 ; his safety- 
lamp, 284. 

Stone, Edmund, how he taught himself 
mathematics, 202. 

Stowell, Lord, 236 ; at Oxford, 237. 

Sunday Schools established,. 138. 

Suppings in public during Lent at Christ's 
Hospital, 70. 

Surrey, Lord, his boyhood and accomplish- 
ments, 153. 

Sutton, Thomas, founds the Charter-house, 
103. 

Swimming in the Thames, Sir Dudley 
North's, 189. 

Taylor, Jeremy, at Cambridge, 172. 
Tennison's Library and School, 131. 
Tenterden, Lord, Chief Justice, at Canter- 
bury and Oxford, 252. 
Testament, Lady Jane Grey's, 79. 
Thomas a Becket, 19. 
Trim, Wellington's school at, 25G. 
Truant punished, 16th century, 80. 
Tunbridge Free Grammar School, 74- 
Tusser, Thomas, at Eton, 173. 

University education in Shakspeare's time, 

165 ; expenses in the 13th century, 25. 
Universities, rise of, 23. 

Vegetius, the Duke of Marlborough's copy 

of, 194. 
Vinny Bourne at Westminster, 227- 

Waller at Market Wickham and Cambridge, 
166, 167 ; his dullness, 166 ; in Parlia- 
ment, 167. 

Wantage, Alfred born at, 7; Jubilee, 7. 

Warwick, Earl of, and Henry VI., 41. 



Watt, James, sketch of, 283. 

Watts, Dr. Isaac, his schools and educa- 
tional works, 198, 199. 

Wellesley, the Marquis, at Eton and Oxford, 
250 ; his classical taste, and love of Eton, 
251. 

Wellington, Duke of, his " Dispatches," 259 ; 
his schoo Is, 256 

Wesley, John, his books and diary, 205 ; at 
the Charter-house and Oxford, 203 ; founds 
Methodism, 205 j his management of time, 
206. 

Wesley s and Wellesleys, the, 203. 

Westminster Abbey School, 83. 

Westminster College founded, 81 ; Hall and 
Library, 85. 

Westminster Scholar, a poor one. 85. 

Westminster School. South on, 184. 

Westminsters, eminent, 84, 85. 

Westminster Green, Blue, Grey, and Black 
Coat Schools, 129. 

White, Henry Kirke, at Cambridge, 286; 
his early'death, 286 ; at Nottingham, 285. 

"Whole Duty of Man, the," 121. 

WickliEFe translates the Bible, 33. 

William the Conqueror, educated, 15. 

William II., education of, 18. 

William III , education of, 130. 

William IV., education of, 145. 

William of Wykeham, early fortunes of; 
149 ; founds Winchester College, 31. 

Winchester College, 31; school in Bisbop 
Ken's time, 185. 

Wolsey, Cardinal, his boyhood, 64. 

Wooll, Dr., head-master at Rugby, 92. 

Woolsthorpe manor-house, the birthplace of 
Newton, 191. 

Wren, Sir Christopher, his scientific attain- 
ments, 183; at VN'estminster and Oxford, 
182. 

Wright, Thomas, M. A., on the English lan- 
guage, 14. 

Writing, introduction of, 3 ; a test of educa- 
tion, 108. 

Wyatt, Sir Thomas, his education and 
youth, 152. 

Wykehamists, distinguished, 32, 88. 



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